Atheism in pagan antiquity

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

ATHEISM IN
PAGAN ANTIQUITY

BY

A. B. DRACHMANN

PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

GYLDENDAL
11 HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1

COPENHAGEN CHRISTIANIA

1922

Syeelc ODn^p^k^

PREFACE

THE present treatise originally appeared in Danish
as a University publication {Kjæbenhavns Uni-
versitets Festskrift^ November 1919). In submitting
it to the English public, I wish to acknowledge my
profound indebtedness to Mr. G. F. Hill of the British
Museum, who not only suggested the English edition, but
also with untiring kindness has subjected the translation,
as originally made by Miss Ingeborg Andersen, M.A. of
Copenhagen, to a painstaking and most valuable revision.

For an account of the previous treatments of the subject,
as well as of the method employed in my investigation,
the reader is referred to the introductory remarks which
precede the Notes.

A. B. DRACHMANN.

Charlottenlund,
July 1922.

5176 .3

CONTENTS

Preface ....... P. v

Introduction ...... Pp. 1-4

Definition of atheism ; its extension in antiquity and later ;
doubtful cases, i. — Limitation of the inquiry ; its relation
to the conception of antiquity, 4.

CHAPTER I

Conception and Treatment of Denial of the Gods

IN Antiquity; Accounts of Deniers . . Pp. 5-14

Atheism and atheist modern words ; the terms of antiquity
and their meaning, 5. — Judicial conception and treatment
of deniers at Athens and at Rome, 6. — Resumé, 11, — Lists
of atheists, 13.

CHAPTER II

Naive Criticism of Popular Religion ; Xenophanes Pp. 15-21

Character of the ancient religion : higher and lower
notions ; the beginning of criticism (Pindar, Euripides), 15.
— Xenophanes, 17.

CHAPTER III

Ionic Naturalism ; Diagoras . . . .Pp. 22-34

Natural philosophy critical of popular belief, but its criticism
not radical. Pantheism. Democritus, 22. — Anaxagoras ;
circle of Pericles; Thucydides, 25. — Hippo and Diogenes,
29. — Diagoras, 31.

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV
Sophistic and its Influence . . . .Pp. 35-63

Character of Sophistic : relativism ; sociological point of
view ; practical purpose ; inconsistency, 35. — Protagoras,
39; Prodicus, 42. — Critias, 44. — Euripides, 51. —
Socrates in Aristophanes and in the indictment ; Ari-
stodemus in Xenophon, 56. — Mutilation of the Hermae,
60. — Plato's Laws, 61.

CHAPTER V
Socrates and the Socratics . . . .Pp. 64-88

Contrast between Sophists and Socratics, 64. — Socrates
in Aristophanes ; in the indictment ; in the defence, 67. —
Socrates no theologian, but a religious moralist ; his
adherence to popular belief and to the old religious
thought ; causes of his condemnation ; the Delphic Oracle
and what it meant to him; his daimonion, 67. — The
Socratics : Cynics, Megarians, Cyrenaics ; Theodorus,
74- — Plato : his views in youth and in old age ; ir-
rationality of the conceptions of the gods, 76. — Xeno-
crates and demonology, 81. — Aristotle : his trial ;
theology; denial of the gods of popular belief, 83. —
Strato, 87. — Concluding remarks, 87.

CHAPTER VI
Hellenism. ...... Pp. 89-119

Advance of oriental religions ; weakening of popular
belief; Polybius on popular belief in Greece and at
Rome, 89. — The Tyche-religion : in Thucydides and
Demosthenes, 92 ; under Alexander and his successors,
93 ; in Polybius and the elder Pliny, 94 ; in the '

Romances, 95. — Decline of the oracles, 96. — Want of
respect to sanctuaries, 97. — Decay of Roman state-wor-
ship, 98. — Philosophy ; Stoics, 103 ; Epicureans, 105 ;
Sceptics, 107; Cynics, 109; Euhemerus, ill. —
Individuals: Polybius, Cicero, 113. — Reaction under
Augustus ; the elder Pliny, 117.

^ CHAPTER VII
Period of the Roman Empire . . .Pp. 120-132

Reaction in the second century; Stoicism, r20. —
Tendencies in opposition : the Cynics ; Oenomaus ;
Lucian, 123. — Monotheism: Judaism, 126; Christianity
and demonology, 128.

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER VIII
Middle Ages and Recent Times . . . Pp. 133-145

Difficulties of treatment, 133. — Demonology in Milton,
G. I. Voss, Thomas Aquinas ; in Dante and other poets ;
in magic ; in the view of contemporary paganism, 134. —
Worship of pagan gods in the Renaissance, 138. —
Naturalistic interpretations in Thomas Aquinas and
later ; Hebraism and Huet ; allegorical interpretation
in Natalis Comes and Bacon ; alchemistic interpretation,
138, — Demonology as explanation of the oracles ; criti-
cised in the Renaissance (Rhodiginus, Calcagninus,
Pomponazzi) and by van Dale and Fontenelle ; con-
servative opposition of Banier, 140. — i8th century:
Vico ; Euhemerism in Banier and Bryant ; nature-sym-
bolism in Dupuis, 143. — 19th century, 144.

CHAPTER IX
Retrospect . . . . . .Pp. 146-152

Atheism only in the upper classes, and even there rare,
except in certain periods ; Philosophy critical and yet
accommodating towards popular belief; victory of
demonology, 146. — Causes of the scarceness of atheism :
defective knowledge of nature. Its victory in the i8th
century conditioned by the progress of natural science ;
the positive insight into the essence of paganism due to
New Humanism, 149.

Notes . . . . . . .Pp. 153-164

Index . . . . . . .Pp. 165-168

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

INTRODUCTION

THE present inquiry is the outcome of a
request to write an article on " Atheism "
for a projected dictionary of the religious
history of classical antiquity. On going through
the sources I found that the subject might well
deserve a more comprehensive treatment than the
scope of a dictionary would allow. It is such a
treatment that I have attempted in the following
pages.

A difficulty that occurred at the very beginning
of the inquiry was how to define the notion of
atheism. Nowadays the term is taken to designate
the attitude which denies every idea of God. Even
antiquity sometimes referred to atheism in this
sense ; but an inquiry dealing with the history of
religion could not start from a definition of that
kind. It would have to keep in view, not the
philosophical notion of God, but the conceptions of
the gods as they appear in the religion of antiquity.
Hence I came to define atheism in Pagan antiquity
as the point of view which denies the existence of the
ancient gods. It is in this sense that the word will
be used in the following inquiry.

Even though we disregard philosophical athe-

2 ATH21SM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

ism, the definition is somewhat narrow ; for
in antiquity mere denial of the existence of the
gods of popular belief was not the only attitude
which was designated as atheism. But it has the
advantage of starting from the conception of the
ancient gods that may be said to have finally pre-
vailed. In the sense in which the word is used
here we are nowadays all of us atheists. We do
not beUeve that the gods whom the Greeks and the
Romans worshipped and believed in exist or have
ever existed ; we hold them to be productions of
the human imagination to which nothing real corre-
sponds. This view has nowadays become so in-
grained in us and appears so self-evident, that we
find it difficult to imagine that it has not been
prevalent through long ages ; nay, it is perhaps a
widely diffused assumption that even in antiquity
educated and unbiased persons held the same
view of the religion of their people as we do. In
reality both assumptions are erroneous : our
" atheism " in regard to ancient paganism is of
recent date, and in antiquity itself downright denial
of the existence of the gods was a comparatively
rare phenomenon. The demonstration of this fact,
rather than a consideration of the various inter-
mediate positions taken up by the thinkers of
antiquity in their desire to avoid a complete rupture
with the traditional ideas of the gods, has been one
of the chief purposes of this inquiry.

Though the definition of atheism set down here
might seem to be clear and unequivocal, and though
I have tried to adhere strictly to it, cases have
unavoidably occurred that were difficult to classify.

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 3

The most embarrassing are those which involve a
reinterpretation of the conception of the gods, i.e.
which, while acknowledging that there is some reality
corresponding to the conception, yet define this
reality as essentially different from it. Moreover,
the acknowledgment of a certain group of gods (the
celestial bodies, for instance) combined with the
rejection of others, may create difficulties in de-
fining the notion of atheism ; in practice, however,
this doctrine generally coincides with the former,
by which the gods are explained away. On the
whole it would hardly be just, in a field of inquiry
like the present, to expect or require absolutely
clearly defined boundary-lines ; transition forms will
always occur.

The persons of whom it is related that they
denied the existence of the ancient gods are in
themselves few, and they all belong to the highest
level of culture'; by far the greater part of them
are simply professional philosophers. Hence the
inquiry will almost exclusively have to deal with
philosophers and philosophical schools and their
doctrines ; of religion as exhibited in the masses,
as a social factor, it will only treat by exception.
But in its purpose it is concerned with the history
of religion, not with philosophy ; therefore — in ac-
cordance with the definition of its object — it will
deal as little as possible with the purely philosophical
notions of God that have nothing to do with popular
religion. What it aims at illustrating is a certain —
if you like, the negative — aspect of ancient religion.
But its result, if it can be sufficiently established,
will not be without importance for the under-

4 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

standing of the positive religious sense of antiquity.
If you want to obtain some idea of the hold a
certain religion had on its adherents, it is not amiss
to know something about the extent to which it
dominated even the strata of society most exposed
to influences that went against it.

It might seem more natural, in dealing with
atheism in antiquity, to adopt the definition current
among the ancients themselves. That this method
would prove futile the following investigation will,
I hope, make sufficiently evident ; antiquity suc-
ceeded as little as we moderns in connecting any
clear and unequivocal idea with the words that
signify " denial of God." On the other hand, it is,
of course, impossible to begin at all except from the
traditions of antiquity about denial and deniers.
Hence the course of the inquiry will be, first to make
clear what antiquity understood by denial of the
gods and what persons it designated as deniers, and
then to examine in how far these persons were
atheists in our sense of the word.

CHAPTER I

ATHEISM and atheist are words formed from
Greek roots and with Greek derivative
endings. Nevertheless they are not
Greek ; their formation is not consonant with
Greek usage. In Greek they said atheos and
atheotes ; to these the Enghsh words ungodly and
ungodliness correspond rather closely. In exactly
the same way as ungodly, atheos was used as an
expression of severe censure and moral condemna-
tion ; this use is an old one, and the oldest that can
be traced. Not till later do we find it employed
to denote a certain philosophical creed ; we even
meet with philosophers bearing atheos as a regular
surname. We know very little of the men in
question ; but it can hardly be doubted that atheos,
as apphed to them, implied not only a denial of the
gods of popular belief, but a denial of gods in the
widest sense of the word, or Atheism as it is nowa-
days understood.

In this case the word is more particularly a
philosophical term. But it was used in a similar
sense also in popular language, and corresponds
then closely to the English " denier of God," de-
noting a person who denies the gods of his people
and State. From the popular point of view the
interest, of course, centred in those only, not in the

6 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

exponents of philosophical theology. Thus we
find the word employed both of theoretical denial
of the gods (atheism in our sense) and of practical
denial of the gods, as in the case of the adherents
of monotheism, Jews and Christians.

Atheism, in the theoretical as well as the practi-
cal sense of the word, was, according to the ancient
conception of law, always a crime ; but in practice
it was treated in different ways, which varied both
according to the period in question and according
to the more or less dangerous nature of the threat
it offered to established reUgion. It is only as far
as Athens and Imperial Rome are concerned that
we have any definite knowledge of the law and the
judicial procedure on this point ; a somewhat
detailed account of the state of things in Athens
and Rome cannot be dispensed with here.

In the criminal law of Athens we meet with
the term aseheia — literally : impiety or disrespect
towards the gods. As an established formula
of accusation of aseheia existed, legislation must
have dealt with the subject ; but how it was
defined we do not know. The word itself conveys
the idea that the law particularly had offences
against public worship in view ; and this is con-
firmed by the fact that a number of such offences —
from the felling of sacred trees to the profanation of
the Eleusinian Mysteries — were treated as aseheia.
When, in the next place, towards the close of the
fifth century B.C., free-thinking began to assume
forms which seemed dangerous to the religion of
the State, theoretical denial of the gods was also
included under aseheia. . From about the beginning

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 7

of the_J^eloponnesian War to the_j:lose_of_the
fourth century_R_c., there are on record a number
of prosecutions of philosophers who were tried and
condemned for denial of the gods. The indict-
ment seems in most cases — the trial of Socrates is
the only one of which we know details — to have
been on the charge of aseheia, and the procedure
proper thereto seems to have been employed,
though there was no proof or assertion of the
accused having offended against public worship ;
as to Socrates, we know the opposite to have been
the case ; he worshipped the gods like any other
good citizen. This extension of the conception of
aseheia to include theoretical denial of the gods
no doubt had no foundation in law ; this is amongst
other things evident from the fact that it was neces-
sary, in order to convict Anaxagoras, to pass a
special public resolution in virtue of which his free-
thinking theories became indictable. The law pre-
sumably dated from a time when theoretical denial of
the gods lay beyond the horizon of legislation. Never-
theless, in the trial of Socrates it is simply taken
for granted that denial of the gods is a capital crime,
and that not only on the side of the prosecution, but
also on the side of the defence : the trial only turns
on a question of fact, the legal basis is taken for
granted. So inveterate, then, at this time was the
conception of the unlawful nature of the denial of
the gods among the people of Athens.

In the course of the fourth century B.C. several
philosophers were accused of denial of the gods or
blasphemy ; but after the close of the century we L
hear no more of such trials. To be sure, our know-

8 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

ledge of the succeeding centuries, when Athens was
but a provincial town, is far less copious than of the
days of its greatness ; nevertheless, it is beyond
doubt that the practice in regard to theoretical
denial of the gods was changed. A philosopher
like Carneades, for instance, might, in view of his
sceptical standpoint, just as well have been con-
victed of aseheia as Protagoras, who was convicted
because he had declared that he did not know
whether the gods existed or not ; and as to such a
process against Carneades, tradition would not have
remained silent. Instead, we learn that he was
employed as the trusted representative of the State
on most important diplomatic missions. It is
evident that Athens had arrived at the point of view
that the theoretical denial of the gods might be
tolerated, whereas the law, of course, continued to
protect public worship.

In Rome they did not possess, as in Athens, a
general statute against religious offences ; there
were only special provisions, and they were, more-
over, few and insufficient. This defect, however,
was remedied by the vigorous police authority
with which the Roman magistrates were invested.
In Rome severe measures were often taken against
movements which threatened the Roman official
worship, but it was done at the discretion of the
administration and not according to hard-and-fast
rules ; hence the practice was somewhat varying,
and a certain arbitrariness inevitable.

No example is known from Rome of action
taken against theoretical denial of the gods cor-
responding to the trials of the philosophers in

I

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 9

Athens. The main cause of this was, no doubt,
that free-thinking in the fifth century B.C. invaded
Hellas, and specially Athens, like a flood which threat-
ened to overthrow everything ; in Rome, on the
other hand, Greek philosophy made its way in
slowly and gradually, and this took place at a time
when in the country of its origin it had long ago
found a modus vivendi with popular religion and
was acknowledged as harmless to the established
worship. The more practical outlook of the
Romans may perhaps also have had something to
say in the matter : they were rather indifferent
to theoretical speculations, whereas they were not
to be trifled with when their national institutions
were concerned.

In consequence of this point of view the Roman
government first came to deal with denial of the
gods as a breach of law when confronted with the
two monotheistic religions which invaded the
Empire from the East. That which distinguished
Jews and Christians from Pagans was not that they
denied the existence of the Pagan gods — the Chris-
tians, at any rate, did not do this as a rule — but
that they denied that they were gods, and therefore
refused to worship them. They were practical,
not theoretical deniers. The tolerance which the
Roman government showed towards all foreign
creeds and the result of which in imperial times was,
practically speaking, freedom of religion over the
whole Empire, could not be extended to the Jews
and the Christians ; for it was in the last resort
based on reciprocity, on the fact that worship of the
Egyptian or Persian gods did not exclude worship

10 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

of the Roman ones. Every convert, on the other
hand, won over to Judaism or Christianity was eo
ipso an apostate from the Roman rehgion, an
atheos according to the ancient conception. Hence,
as soon as such reUgions began to spread, they con-
stituted a serious danger to the estabhshed rehgion,
and the Roman government intervened. Judaism
and Christianity were not treated quite ahke ; in
this connexion details are of no interest, but
certain principal features must be dwelt on as
significant of the attitude of antiquity towards
denial of the gods. To simplify matters I con-
fine myself to Christianity, where things are less
complicated.

The Christians were generally designated as
atheoi, as deniers of the gods, and the objection
against them was precisely their denial of the
Pagan gods, not their religion as such. When the
Christian, summoned before the Roman magis-
trates, agreed to sacrifice to the Pagan gods
(among them, the Emperor) he was acquitted ;
he was not punished for previously having at-
tended Christian services, and it seems that he
was not even required to undertake not to do so in
future. Only if he refused to sacrifice, was he
punished. We cannot ask for a clearer proof that
it is apostasy as such, denial of the gods, against
which action is taken. It is in keeping with this
that, at any rate under the earher Empire, no at-
tempt was made to seek out the Christians at their
assemblies, to hinder their services or the like ; it
was considered sufficient to take steps when in-
formation was laid.

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 11

The punishments meted out were different, in
that they were left solely to the discretion of
the magistrates. But they were generally severe :
forced labour in mines and capital punishment were
quite common. No discrimination was made be-
tween Roman citizens and others belonging to the
Empire, but all were treated alike ; that the Roman
citizen could not undergo capital punishment without
appeal to the Emperor does not affect the principle.
This procedure has really no expressly formulated
basis in law ; the Roman penal code did not, as
mentioned above, take cognizance of denial of the
gods. Nevertheless, the sentences on the Christians
were considered by the Pagans of the earlier time
as a matter of course, the justice of which was not
contested, and the procedure of the government
was in principle the same under humane and con-
scientious rulers like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius
as under tyrants like Nero and Domitian. Here
again it is evident how firmly rooted in the mind
of antiquity was the conviction that denial of the
gods was a capital offence.

To resume what has here been set forth con-
cerning the attitude of ancient society to atheism :
it is, in the first place, evident that the frequently
mentioned tolerance of polytheism was not extended
I to those who denied its gods ; in fact, it was applied
jonly to those who acknowledged them even if
'they worshipped others besides. But the assertion
of this principle of intolerance varied greatly in
practice according to whether it was a question of
theoretical denial of the gods — atheism in our
sense — or practical refusal to worship the Pagan

v

12 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

gods. Against atheism the community took action
I only during a comparatively short period, and, as
I far as we know, only in a single place. The latter
limitation is probably explained not only by the
defectiveness of tradition, but also by the fact that
in Athens free-thinking made its appearance ^bout
'the year 400 as a general phenomenon and therefore
attracted' the attention of the community. Apart
from this case, the philosophical denier of God was
left in peace all through antiquity, in the same way
as the individual citizen was not interfered with, as
a rule, when he, for one reason or another, refrained
from taking part in the worship of the deities. On
the other hand, as soon as practical refusal to be-
lieve in the gods, apostasy from the established
religion, assumed dangerous proportions, ruthless
severity was exercised against it.

The discrimination, however, made in the treat-
ment of the theoretical and practical denial of the
gods is certainly not due merely to consideration of
the more or less isolated occurrence of the phe-
nomenon ; it is rooted at the same time in the very
nature of ancient religion. The essence of ancient
polytheism is the worship of the gods, that is, cultus ;
of a doctrine of divinity properly speaking, of
theology, there were only slight rudiments, and
there was no idea of any elaborate dogmatic system.
Quite different attitudes were accordingly assumed
towards the philosopher, who held his own opinions
of the gods, but took part in the public worship like
anybody else ; and towards the monotheist, to whom
the whole of the Pagan worship was an abomination,
which one should abstain from at any cost, and

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 13

which one should prevail on others to give up for the
sake of their own good in this life or the next.

In the literature of antiquity we meet with
sporadic statements to the effect that certain
philosophers bore the epithet atheos as a sort of
surname ; and in a few of the later authors of
antiquity we even find lists of men — almost all of
them philosophers — who denied the existence of
the gods. Furthermore, we possess information
about certain persons — these also, if Jews and
Christians are excluded, are nearly all of them
philosophers — having been accused of, and event-
ually convicted of, denial of the gods ; some of
these are not in our lists. Information of this kind
will, as remarked above, be taken as the point of
departure for an investigation of atheism in anti-
quity. For practical reasons, however, it is reason-
able to include some philosophers w^hom antiquity
did not designate as atheists, and who did not come
into conflict with official religion, but of whom it
has been maintained in later times that they did
not believe in the existence of the gods of popular
belief. Thus we arrive at the following list, in
which those who were denoted as atheci are italicised
and those who were accused of impiety are marked
with an asterisk :

Xenophanes.

Antisthenes.

♦Anaxagoras.

Plato.

Diogenes of Apollonia.

♦Aristotle.

Hippo of Rhegium.

Theophrastus,

*Protagoras.

*Stilpo.

Prodicus.

*Theodorus.

Critias.

*Bion.

*Diagoras of Melos.

Epicurus.

♦Socrates.

Euhemerus.

14 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

The persons are put down in chronological
order. This order will in some measure be pre-
served in the following survey ; but regard for the
continuity of the tradition of the doctrine will
entail certain deviations. It will, that is to say, be
natural to divide the material into four groups :
the pre-Socratic philosophy ; the Sophists ; Socrates
and the Socratics ; Hellenistic philosophy. Each
of these groups has a philosophical character of its
own, and it will be seen that this character also
makes itself felt in the relation to the gods of the
popular belief, even though we here meet with
phenomena of more isolated occurrence. The four
groups must be supplemented by a fifth, a survey
of the conditions in Imperial Rome. Atheists of
this period are not found in our lists ; but a good
deal of old Pagan free-thinking survives in the first
centuries of our era, and also the epithet atheoi was
bestowed generally on the Christians and sometimes
on the Jews, and if only for this reason they cannot
be altogether passed by in this survey.

CHAPTER II

THE paganism of antiquity is based on a
primitive religion, i.e. it is originally in
the main homogeneous with the religions
nowadays met with in the so-called primitive
peoples. It underwent, however, a long process of
evolution parallel with and conditioned by the
development of Greek and later Roman civilisation.
This evolution carried ancient religion far away
from its primitive starting-point ; it produced
numerous new formations, above all a huge system
of anthropomorphic gods, each with a definite
character and personality of his own. This develop-
ment is the result of an interplay of numerous
factors : changing social and economical conditions
evoked the desire for new religious ideas ; the
influence of other peoples made itself felt ; poetry
and the fine arts contributed largely to the mould-
ing of these ideas ; conscious reflection, too, arose
early and modified original simplicity. But what is
characteristic of the whole process is the fact that
it went on continuously without breaks or sudden
bounds. Nowhere in ancient religion, as far as we
can trace it, did a powerful religious personality
strike in with a radical transformation, with a
direct rejection of old ideas and dogmatic accentua-
tion of new ones. The result of this quiet growth

16 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

was an exceedingly heterogeneous organism, in
which remains of ancient, highly primitive customs
and ideas were retained along with other elements of
a far more advanced character.

Such a state of things need not in itself trouble
the general consciousness ; it is a well-established
fact that in religion the most divergent elements
are not incompatible. Nevertheless, among the
Greeks, with their strong proclivity to reflective
thought, criticism early arose against the traditional
conceptions of the gods. The typical method of
this criticism is that the higher conceptions of the
gods are used against the lower. From the earliest
times the Greek religious sense favoured absolute-
ness of definition where the gods are concerned ;
even in Homer they are not only eternal and happy,
but also all-powerful and all-knowing. Correspond-
ing expressions of a moral character are hardly
to be found in Homer ; but as early as Hesiod and
Solon we find, at any rate, Zeus as the representative
of heavenly justice. With such definitions a large
number of customs of public worship and, above all,
a number of stories about the gods, were in violent
contradiction ; thus we find even so old and so
pious a poet as Pindar occasionally rejecting
mythical stories which he thinks at variance with
the sublime nature of the gods. This form of
criticism of popular beliefs is continued through
the whole of antiquity ; it is found not only in
philosophers and philosophically educated laymen,
but appears spontaneously in everybody of a
reflective mind ; its best known representative in
earlier times is Euripides. Typical of its popu-

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 17

lar form is in the first place its casualness ; it
is directed against details which at the moment
attract attention, while it leaves other things
alone which in principle are quite as offensive,
but either not very obviously so, or else not
relevant to the matter in hand. Secondly, it is
naive : it takes the gods of the popular belief for
granted essentially as they are ; it does not raise
the crucial question whether the popular belief is not
quite justified in attributing to these higher beings
all kinds of imperfection, and wrong in attributing
perfection to them, and still less if such beings,
whether they are defined as perfect or imperfect,
exist at all. It follows that as a whole this form of
criticism is outside the scope of our inquiry.

Still, there is one single personality in early
Greek thought who seems to have proceeded still
further on the lines of this naive criticism, namely,
Xenophanes of Colophon. He is generally included
amongst the philosophers, and rightly in so far as
he initiated a philosophical speculation which was
of the highest importance in the development
of Greek scientific thought. But in the present
connexion it would, nevertheless, be misleading to
place Xenophanes among those philosophers who
came into conflict with the popular belief because
their conception of Existence was based on science.
The starting-point for his criticism of the popular
belief is in fact not philosophical, but religious ; he
ranks with personalities like Pindar and Euripides
— he was also a verse-writer himself, with consider-
able poetic gift — and is only distinguished from them
by the greater consistency of his thought. Hence,

18 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

the correct course is to deal with him in this place
as the only eminent thinker in antiquity about
whom it is known that — starting from popular
belief and religious motives — he reached a stand-
point which at any rate with some truth may be
designated as atheism.

Xenophanes lived in the latter part of the sixth
and the beginning of the fifth centuries B.C. (accord-
ing to his own statement he reached an age of more
than ninety years). He was an itinerant singer who
travelled about and recited poetry, presumably
not merely his own but also that of others. In
his own poems he severely attacked the manner
in which Homer and Hesiod, the most famous poets
of Greece, had represented the gods : they had
attributed to them everything which in man's eyes
is outrageous and reprehensible — theft, adultery and
deception of one another. Their accounts of the
fights of the gods against Titans and Giants he
denounced as " inventions of the ancients." But
he did not stop at that : " Men believe that the
gods are born, are clothed and shaped and speak
like themselves" ; "if oxen and horses and lions
could draw and paint, they would delineate their gods
in their own image " ; " the Negroes believe that
their gods are fiat-nosed and black, the Thracians
that theirs have blue eyes and red hair." Thus he
attacked directly the popular belief that the gods
are anthropomorphic, and his arguments testify
that he clearly realised that men create their gods
in their own image. On another main point, too,
he was in direct opposition to the religious ideas
of his time : he rejected Divination, the belief that

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 19

the gods imparted the secrets of the future to men —
which was deemed a mainstay of the beUef in the
existence of the gods. As a positive counterpart
to the anthropomorphic gods, Xenophanes set up
a philosophical conception of God: God must be
One, Eternal, Unchangeable and identical with
himself in every way (all sight, all hearing and all
mind). This deity, according to the explicit state-
ments of our earliest sources, he identified with the
universe.

If we examine more closely the arguments put
forth by Xenophanes in support of his remarkable
conception of the deity, we realise that he every-
where starts from the definitions of the nature of
the gods as given by popular religion ; but, be it
understood, solely from the absolute definitions.
He takes the existence of the divine, with its absolute
attributes, for granted ; it is in fact the basis of all
his speculation. His criticism of the popular ideas
of the gods is therefore closely connected with his
philosophical conception of God ; the two are the
positive and negative sides of the same thing.
Altogether his connexion with what I call the naive
criticism of the popular religion is unmistakable.

It is undoubtedly a remarkable fact that we
meet at this early date with such a consistent
representative of this criticism. If we take Xeno-
phanes at his word we must describe him as an
atheist, and atheism in the sixth century B.C. is a
very curious phenomenon indeed. Neither was it
acknowledged in antiquity ; no one placed Xeno-
phanes amongst atheoi ; and Cicero even says
somewhere (according to Greek authority) that

20 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

Xenophanes was the only one of those who believed
in gods who rejected divination. In more recent
times, too, serious doubt has been expressed whether
Xenophanes actually denied the existence of the
gods. Reference has amongst other things been
made to the fact that he speaks in several places
about " gods " where he, according to his view,
ought to say " God " ; nay, he has even formulated
his fundamental idea in the words : " One God, the
greatest amongst gods and men, neither in shape nor
mind like unto any mortal." To be sure, Xeno-
phanes is not always consistent in his language ;
but no weight whatever ought to be attached to
this, least of all in the case of a man who exclusively
expressed himself in verse. Another theory rests
on the tradition that Xenophanes regarded his
deity and the universe as identical, consequently
was a pantheist. In that case, it is said, he may
very well have considered, for instance, the heavenly
bodies as deities. Sound as this argument is in
general, it does not apply to this case. When a
thinker arrives at pantheism, starting from a criti-
cism of polytheism which is expressly based on the
antithesis between the unity and plurality of the
deity — then very valid proofs, indeed, are needed in
order to justify the assumption that he after all
believed in a plurality of gods ; and such proofs are
wanting in the case of Xenophanes.

Judging from the material in hand one can hardly
arrive at any other conclusion than that the stand-
point of Xenophanes comes under our definition of
atheism. But we must not forget that only frag-
ments of his writings have been preserved, and that

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 21

the more extensive of them do not assist us
greatly to the understanding of his rehgious stand-
point. It is possible that we might have arrived
at a different conclusion had we but possessed his
chief philosophical work in its entirety, or at least
larger portions of it. And I must candidly confess
that if I were asked whether, in my heart of hearts,
I believed that a Greek of the sixth century B.C.
denied point-blank the existence of his gods, my
answer would be in the negative.

That Xenophanes was not considered an atheist
by the ancients may possibly be explained by the
fact that they objected to fasten this designation on
a man whose reasoning took the deity as a starting-
point and whose sole aim was to define its nature.
Perhaps they also had an inkling that he in reality
stood on the ground of popular belief, even if he
went beyond it. Still more curious is the fact that
his religious view does not seem to have influenced
the immediately succeeding philosophy at all. His
successors, Parmenides and Zeno, developed his
doctrine of unity, but in a pantheistic direction,
and on a logical, not religious line of argument ;
about their attitude to popular belief we are told
practically nothing. And Ionic speculation took a
quite different direction. Not till a century later,
in Euripides, do we observe a distinct influence of
his criticism of popular belief ; but at that time other
currents of opinion had intervened which are not
dependent on Xenophanes, but might direct atten-
tion to him.

CHAPTER III

ANCIENT Greek naturalism is essentially
calculated to collide with the popular
belief. It seeks a natural explanation of
the world, first and foremost of its origin, but in
the next place of individual natural phenomena.
As to the genesis of the world, speculations of a
mythical kind had already developed on the basis
of the popular belief. They were not, however,
binding on anybody, and, above all, the idea of the
gods having created the world was altogether alien
to Greek religion. Thus, without offence to them
it might be maintained that everything originated
from a primary substance or from a mixture of
several primary substances, as was generally main-
tained by the ancient naturalists. On the other
hand, a conflict arose as soon as the heavenly
phenomena, such as lightning and thunder, were
ascribed to natural causes, or when the heavenly
bodies were made out to be natural objects ; for to
the Greeks it was an established fact that Zeus sent
lightning and thunder, and that the sun and the
moon were gods. A refusal to believe in the latter
was especially dangerous because they were visible
gods, and as to the person who did not believe in
their divinity the obvious conclusion would be that
he believed still less in the invisible gods.

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 23

That this inference was drawn will appear before
long. But the epithet " atheist " was very rarely-
attached to the ancient naturalists ; only a few of
the later (and those the least important) were given
the nickname atheos. Altogether we hear very
little of the relation of these philosophers to the
popular belief, and this very silence is surely signifi-
cant. No doubt, most of them bestowed but a
scant attention on this aspect of the matter ; they
were engrossed in speculations which did not bring
them into conflict with the popular belief, and even
their scientific treatment of the " divine " natural
phenomena did not make them doubt the existence
of the gods. This is connected with a peculiarity in
their conception of existence. Tradition tells us
of several of them, and it applies presumably also
to those of whom it is not recorded, that they
designated their primary substance or substances
as gods ; sometimes they also applied this designa-
tion to the world or worlds originating in the primary
substance. This view is deeply rooted in the Greek
popular belief and harmonises with its fundamental
view of existence. To these ancient thinkers the
primary substance is at once a living and a super-
human power ; and any living power which tran-
scended that of man was divine to the Greeks.
Hylozoism (the theory that matter is alive) con-
sequently, when it allies itself with popular belief,
leads straight to pantheism, whereas it excludes
monotheism, which presupposes a distinction be-
tween god and matter. Now it is a matter of ex-
perience that, while monotheism is the hereditary
foe of polytheism, polytheism and pantheism go

24 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

very well together. The universe being divine,
there is no reason to doubt that beings of a higher
order than man exist, nor any reason to refuse to
bestow on them the predicate " divine " ; and with
this we find ourselves in principle on the standpoint
of polytheistic popular belief. There is nothing
surprising, then, in the tradition that Thales
identified God with the mind of the universe and
believed the universe to be animated, and filled with
" demons." The first statement is in this form
probably influenced by later ideas and hardly a
correct expression of the view of Thales ; the rest
bears the very stamp of genuineness, and similar
ideas recur, more or less completely and variously
refracted, in the succeeding philosophers.

To follow these variations in detail is outside the
scope of this investigation ; but it may be of interest
to see the form they take in one of the latest and
most advanced representatives of Ionian naturalism.
In Democritus's conception of the unjverse, personal
gods would seem excluded a priori. He works with
but three premises : the atoms, their movements,
and empty space. From this everything is derived
according to strict causality. Such phenomena
also as thunder and lightning, comets and eclipses,
which were generally ascribed to the gods, are
according to his opinion due to natural causes,
whereas people in the olden days were afraid of them
because they believed they were due to the gods.
Nevertheless, he seems, in the first place, to have
designated Fire, which he at the same time recog-
nised as a " soul-substance," as divine, the cosmic
fire being the soul of the world; and secondly.

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 25

he thought that there was something real under-
lying the popular conception of the gods. He
was led to this from a consideration of dreams,
which he thought were images of real objects which
entered into the sleeper through the pores of the
body. Now, since gods might be seen in dreams,
they must be real beings. He did actually say that
»the gods had more senses than the ordinary five,
when he who of all the Greek philosophers went
furthest in a purely mechanical conception of
nature took up such an attitude to the religion of
his people, one cannot expect the others, who were
less advanced, to discard it.

Nevertheless, there is a certain probability
that some of the later Ionian naturalists went
further in their criticism of the gods of popular
belief. One of them actually came into conflict
with popular, religion ; it will be natural to begin
with him.

Shortly before the outbreak of the Pelopon-
nesian War, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was accused
of impiety and had to leave Athens, where he had
taken up his abode. The object of the accusation
was in reality political ; the idea being to hit Pericles
through his friend the naturalist. What Anaxa-
goras was charged with was that he had assumed
that the heavenly bodies were natural objects ; he
had taught that the sun was a red-hot mass, and
that the moon was earth and larger than Pelopon-
nese. To base an accusation of impiety on this, it
was necessary first to carry a public resolution,
giving power to prosecute those who gave natural
explanations of heavenly phenomena.

26 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

As to Anaxagoras's attitude to popular belief, we
hear next to nothing apart from this. There is a
story of a ram's head being found with one horn in
the middle of the forehead ; it was brought to
Pericles, and the soothsayer Lampon explained the
portent to the effect that, of the two men, Pericles
and Thucydides, who contended for the leadership
of Athens, one should prove victorious. Anaxa-
goras, on the other hand, had the ram's head cut
open and showed that the brain did not fill up the
cranium, but was egg-shaped and lay gathered
together at the point where the horn grew out.
He evidently thought that abortions also, which
otherwise were generally considered as signs from
the gods, were due to natural causes. Beyond this,
nothing is said of any attack on the popular belief
on the part of Anaxagoras, and in his philosophy
nothing occurred which logically entailed a denial of
the existence of the gods. Add to this that it was
necessary to create a new judicial basis for the
accusation against Anaxagoras, and it can be taken
as certain that neither in his writings nor in any
other way did he come forward in public as a denier
of the gods.

It is somewhat different when we consider the
purely personal point of view of Anaxagoras. The
very fact that no expression of his opinion concern-
ing the gods has been transmitted affords food for
thought. Presumably there was none ; but this
very fact is notable when we bear in mind that
the earlier naturalists show no such reticence. Add
to this that, if there is any place and any time in
which we might expect a complete emancipation

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 27

from popular belief, combined with a decided dis-
inclination to give expression to it, it is Athens^
under Pericles. Men like Pericles and his friends]
represent a high level, perhaps the zenith, in Hellenic
culture. That they were critical of many of the
religious conceptions of their time we may take for
granted ; as to Pericles himself, this is actually
stated as a fact, and the accusations of impiety
directed against Aspasia and Pheidias prove that
orthodox circles were very well aware of it..
But the accusations prove, moreover, that Pericles!
and those who shared his views were so much in y
advance of their time that they could not afford
to let their free-thinking attitude become a matter
of public knowledge without endangering their
political position certainly, and possibly even more
than that. To be sure, considerations of that kind
did not weigh with Anaxagoras ; but he was — and
that we know on good authority — a quiet scholar
whose ideal of life was to devote himself to problems
of natural science, and he can hardly have wished
to be disturbed in this occupation by affairs in which
he took no sort of interest. The question is then
only how far men like Pericles and himself may have
ventured in their criticism. Though all direct
tradition is wanting, we have at any rate circum-
stantial evidence possessing a certain degree of
probability.

To begin with, the attempt to give a natural
explanation of prodigies is not in itself without
interest. The mantic art, i.e. the ability to predict
the future by signs from the gods or direct divine
inspiration, was throughout antiquity considered

28 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

one of the surest proofs of the existence of the gods.
Now, it by no means follows that a person who was
not impressed by a deformed ram's head would
deny, e.g., the ability of the Delphic Oracle to pre-
dict the future, especially not so when the person
in question was a naturalist. But that there was
at this time a general tendency to reject the art of
divination is evident from the fact that Herodotus as
well as %)phocles, both of them contemporaries of
Pericles and Anaxagoras, expressly contend against
attempts in that direction, and, be it remarked,
as if the theory they attack was commonly held.
Sophocles is in this connexion so far the more
interesting of the two, as, on one hand, he criticises
private divination but defends the Delphic oracle
vigorously, while he, on the other hand, identifies
denial of the oracle with denial of the gods. And
he does this in such a way as to make it evident
that he has a definite object in mind. That in
this polemic he may have been aiming precisely
at Anaxagoras is indicated by the fact that Dio-
peithes, who carried the resolution concerning the
accusation of the philosopher, was a soothsayer by
profession.

The strongest evidence as to the free-thinking of
the Periclean age is, however, to be met with in
the historical writing of Thucydides. In his work
on the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides completely
eliminated the supernatural element ; not only did
he throughout ignore omens and divinations, except
in so far as they played a part as a psychological
factor, but he also completely omitted any reference
to the gods in his narrative. Such a procedure was

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 29

at this time unprecedented, and contrasts sharply
with that of his immediate forerunner Herodotus,
who constantly lays stress on the intervention of the
gods. That is hardly conceivable except in a man
who had altogether emancipated himself from the
religious views of his time. Now, Thucydides is not
only a fellow-countr3^man and younger contem-'
porary of Pericles, but he also sees in Pericles his
ideal not only as a politician but evidently also as a
man. Hence, when everything is considered, it is
not improbable that Pericles and his friends went
to all lengths in their criticism of popular belief,
although, of course, it remains impossible to state
anything definite as to particular persons* in-
dividual views. Curiously enough, even in anti-
quity this connexion was observed ; in a biography
of Thucydides it is said that he was a disciple of
Anaxagoras and accordingly was also considered
something of an atheist.

While Anaxagoras, his trial notwithstanding,
is not generally designated an atheist, probably
because there was nothing in his writings to which
he might be pinned down, that fate befel two of his
contemporaries. Hippo of Rhegium and Diogenes of
ApoUonia. Very little, however, is known of them.
Hippo, who is said to have been a Pythagorean,
taught that water and fire were the origin of every-
thing ; as to the reason why he earned the nick-
name atheos, it is said that he taught that Water was
the primal cause of all, as well as that he maintained
that nothing existed but what could be perceived by
the senses. There is also quoted a (fictitious) inscrip-
tion, which he is said to have caused to be put on his

30 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

tomb, to the effect that Death has made him the
equal of the immortal gods (in that he now exists
no more than they). Otherwise we know nothing
special of Hippo ; Aristotle refers to him as shallow.
As to Diogenes, we learn that he was influenced
by Anaximenes and Anaxagoras ; in agreement with
the former he regarded Air as the primary substance,
and like Anaxagoras he attributed reason to his
primary substance. Of his doctrine we have ex-
tensive accounts, and also some not inconsider-
able fragments of his treatise On Nature ; but
they are almost all of them of purely scientific,
mostly of an anatomical and physiological character.
In especial, as to his relation to popular belief, it is
recorded that he identified Zeus with the air. In-
directly, however, we are able to demonstrate, by
the aid of an almost contemporary witness, that
there must have been some foundation for the
accusation of " atheism." For in The Clouds, where
Aristophanes wants to represent Socrates as an
atheist, he puts in his mouth scraps of the naturalism
of Diogenes ; that he would hardly have done, if
Diogenes had not already been decried as an
atheist.

It is of course impossible to base any statement
of the relation of the two philosophers to popular
belief on such a foundation. But it is, nevertheless,
worth noticing that while not a single one of the
earlier naturalists acquired the designation atheist,
it was applied to two of the latest and otherwise
little-known representatives of the school. Take
this in combination with what has been said above
of Anaxagoras, and we get at any rate a suspicion

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 31

that Greek naturalism gradually led its adherents
beyond the naive stage where many individual
phenomena were indeed ascribed to natural causes,
even if they had formerly been regarded as caused
by divine intervention, but where the foundations
of the popular belief were left untouched. Once
this path has been entered on, a point will be
arrived at where the final conclusion is drawn and
the existence of the supernatural completely denied.
It is probable that this happened towards the close
of the naturalistic period. If so early a philosopher
as Anaxagoras took this point of view, his personal
contribution as a member of the Periclean circle
may have been more significant in the religious field
than one would conjecture from the character of his
work.

Before we proceed to mention the sophists, there
is one person on our list who must be examined
though the result will be negative, namely, Diagoras
of Melos. As he appears in our records, he falls
outside the classification adopted here ; but as he
must have lived, at any rate, about the middle
of the fifth century (he is said to have " flourished "
in 464) he may most fitly be placed on the
boundary line between the Ionian philosophy and
Sophistic.

For later antiquity Diagoras is the typical
atheist ; he heads our lists of atheists, and round
his person a whole series of myths have been formed.
He is said to have been a poet and a pious man like
others ; but then a colleague once stole an ode from
him, escaped by taking an oath that he was innocent,
and afterwards made a hit with the stolen work.

32 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

So Diagoras lost his faith in the gods and wrote a
treatise under the title of apopyrgizontes logoi
(literally, destructive considerations) in which he
attacked the belief in the gods.

This looks very plausible, and is interesting in
so far as it, if correct, affords an instance of atheism
arising in a layman from actual experience, not in a
philosopher from speculation. If we ask, however,
what is known historically about Diagoras, we are
told a different tale. There existed in Athens,
engraved on a bronze tablet and set up on the
Acropolis, a decree of the people offering a reward
of one talent to him who should kill Diagoras of
Melos, and of two talents to him who should bring
him alive to Athens. The reason given was that he
had scoffed at the Eleusinian Mysteries and divulged
what took place at them. The date of this decree
is given by a historian as 415 B.C. ; that this is
correct is seen from a passage in Aristophanes's con-
temporary drama. The Birds. Furthermore, one of
the disciples of Aristotle, the literary historian
Aristoxenus, states that no trace of impiety was
to be found in the works of the dithyrambic poet
Diagoras, and that, in fact, they contained definite
opinions to the contrary. A remark to the effect
that Diagoras was instrumental in drawing up the
laws of Mantinea is probably due to the same
source. The context shows that the reference is
to the earlier constitution of Mantinea, which
was a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, and
is praised for its excellence. It is inconceivable
that, in a Peloponnesian city during the course
of, nay, presumably even before the middle of

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 33

the fifth century, a notorious atheist should
have been invited to advise on the revision of its
constitution. It is more probable that Aristoxenus
adduced this fact as an additional disproof of
Diagoras's atheism, in which he evidently did not
believe.

The above information explains the origin of
the legend. Two fixed points were in existence :
the pious poet of c. 460 and the atheist who was
outlawed in 415 ; a bridge was constructed between
them by the story of the stolen ode. This disposes
of the whole supposition of atheism growing out of
a basis of experience. But, furthermore, it must be
admitted that it is doubtful whether the poet and
the atheist are one and the same person. The
interval of time between them is itself suspicious,
for the poet, according to the ancient system of
calculation, must have been about forty years old
in 464, consequently between eighty and ninety in
415. (There is general agreement that the treatise,
the title of which has been quoted, must have been
a later forgery.) If, in spite of all, I dare not abso-
lutely deny the identity of the two Diagorases of
tradition, the reason is that Aristophanes, where he
mentions the decree concerning Diagoras, seems to
suggest that his attack on the Mysteries was an
old story which was raked up again in 415. But
for our purpose, at any rate, nothing remains of the
copious mass of legend but the fact that one
Diagoras of Melos in 415 was outlawed in Athens on
the ground of his attack on the Mysteries. Such an
attack may have been the outcome of atheism ;
there was no lack of impiety in Athens at the end

84 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

of the fifth century. But whether this was the case
or not we cannot possibly tell ; and to throw light
on free-thinking tendencies in Athens at this time,
we have other and richer sources than the historical
notice of Diagoras.

CHAPTER IV

WITH the movement in Greek thought which
is generally known as sophistic, a new
view of popular belief appears. The
criticism of the sophists was directed against the
entire tradition on which Greek society was based,
and principally against the moral conceptions which
hitherto had been unquestioned : good and evil,
right and wrong. The criticism was essentially
negative ; that which hitherto had been imagined
as absolute was demonstrated to be relative, and
the relative was identified with the invalid. Thus
they could not help running up against the popular
ideas of the gods, and treating them in the same
way. A leading part was here played by the
sophistic distinction between nomos and physis,
Law and Nature, i.e. that which is based on human
convention, and that which is founded on the nature
of things. The sophists could not help seeing that
the whole public worship and the ideas associated
with it belonged to the former — to the domain of
" the law." Not only did the worship and the
conceptions of the gods vary from place to place in
the hundreds of small independent communities into
which Hellas was divided — a fact which the sophists
had special opportunity of observing when travel-
ling from town to town to teach ; but it was even

35

36 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

officially admitted that the whole ritual — which,
popularly speaking, was almost identical with
religion — was based on convention. If a Greek
was asked why a god was to be worshipped in such
and such a way, generally the only answer was :
because it is the law of the State (or the convention ;
the word nomos expresses both things). Hence it
followed in principle that religion came under the
domain of " the law," being consequently the work
of man ; and hence again the obvious conclusion,
according to sophistic reasoning, was that it was
nothing but human imagination, and that there was
no physis, no reality, behind it at all. In the case of
the naturalists, it was the positive foundation of their
system, their conception of nature as a whole, that
led them to criticise the popular belief. Hence their
criticism was in the main only directed against those
particular ideas in the popular belief which were at
variance with the results of their investigations. To
be sure, the sophists were not above making use of
the results of natural science in their criticism of the
popular belief ; it was their general aim to impart
the highest education of their time, and of a liberal
education natural science formed a rather important
part. But their starting-point was quite different
from that of the naturalists. Their whole interest
was concentrated on man as a member of the
community, and it was from consideration of this
relation that they were brought into collision with
the established religion. Hence their attack was
far more dangerous than that of the naturalists ;
no longer was it directed against details, it laid bare
the psychological basis itself of popular belief and

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 37

clearly revealed its unstable character. Their criti-
cism was fundamental and central, not casual and
circumstantial.

From a purely practical point of view also, the
criticism of the sophists was far more dangerous
than that of the old philosophers. They were not
theorists themselves, but practitioners ; their
business was to impart the higher education to the
more mature youth. It was therefore part of their
profession to disseminate their views not by means
of learned professional writings, but by the per-
suasive eloquence of oral discourse. And in their
criticism of the existing state of things they did not
start with special results which only science could
prove, and the correctness of which the layman
need not recognise ; they operated with facts and
principles known and acknowledged by everybody.
It is not to be wondered at that such efforts evoked
a vigorous reaction on the part of established society,
the more so as in any case the result of sophistic
criticism — though not consciously its object — was
to liquefy the moral principles on which the social
order was based.

Such, in principle, appeared to be the state of
things. In practice, here as elsewhere, the devil
proved not so black as he was painted. First, not
all the sophists — hardly even the majority of them
— drew the logical conclusions from their views in
respect of either morals or religion. They were
teachers of rhetoric, and as such they taught, for
instance, all the tricks by which a bad cause might be
defended ; that was part of the trade. But it must
be supposed that Gorgias, the most distinguished of

4

f

38 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

them, expressly insisted that rhetoric, just like any
other art the aim of which was to defeat an opponent,
should only be used for good ends. Similarly many of
them may have stopped short in their criticism of
popular belief at some arbitrary point, so that it was
possible for them to respect at any rate something
of the established religion, and so, of course, first
and foremost the very belief in the existence of
the gods. That they did not as a rule interfere
with public worship, we may be sure ; that was
based firmly on " the Law." But, in addition, even
sophists who personally took an attitude radically
contradictory to popular belief had the most
important reasons for being careful in advancing
such a view. They had to live by being the teachers
of youth ; they had no fixed appointment, they
travelled about as lecturers and enlisted disciples
by means of their lectures. For such men it would
have been a very serious thing to attack the estab-
lished order in its tenderest place, religion, and
above all they had to beware of coming into conflict
with the penal laws. This risk they did not incur
while confining themselves to theoretical discussions
about right and wrong, nor by the practical applica-
tion of them in their teaching of rhetoric ; but they
might very easily incur it if attacking religion.

This being the case, it is not to be wondered at
that we do not find many direct statements of
undoubtedly atheistical character handed down from
the more eminent sophists, and that trials for
impiety are rare in their case. But, nevertheless,
a few such cases are met with, and from these as
our starting-point we will now proceed.

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 39

As to Protagoras of Abdera, one of the earliest
and most famous of all the sophists, it is stated that
he began a pamphlet treating of the gods with the
words : " Concerning the gods I can say nothing,
neither that they exist nor that they do not exist,
nor of what form they are ; because there are many
things which prevent one from knowing that,
namely, both the uncertainty of the matter and the
shortness of man's life." On this account, it is said,
he was charged with impiety at Athens and was
outlawed, and his works were publicly burned. The
date of this trial is not known for certain ; but it is
reasonably supposed to have coincided with that of
Diagoras, namely, in 415. At any rate it must have
taken place after 423-421, as we know that Prota-
goras was at that time staying in Athens. As he
must have been born about 485, the charge over-
took him when old and famous ; according to one
account, his work on the gods seems to belong to his
earlier writings.

To doubt the correctness of this tradition would
require stronger reasons than we possess, although
it is rather strange that the condemnation of
Protagoras is mentioned neither in our historical
sources nor in Aristophanes, and that Plato, who
mentions Protagoras rather frequently as dead,
never alludes to it. At any rate, the quotation
from the work on the gods is certainly authentic,
for Plato himself referred to it. Hence it is
certain that Protagoras directly stated the problem
as to the existence of the gods and regarded it as an
open question. But beyond that nothing much
can be deduced from the short quotation ; and as

40 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

to the rest of the book on the gods we know nothing.
The meagre reasons for scepticism adduced prob-
ably do not imply any more than that the diffi-
culties are objective as well as subjective. If, in
the latter respect, the brevity of life is specially men-
tioned it may be supposed that Protagoras had in
mind a definite proof of the existence of the
gods which was rendered difficult by the fact
that life is so brief ; prediction of the future
may be guessed at, but nothing certain can be
stated.

Protagoras is the only one of the sophists of
whom tradition says that he was the object of per-
secution owing to his religious views. The trial of
Socrates, however, really belongs to the same cate-
gory when looked at from the accusers' point of
view ; Socrates was accused as a sophist. But as
his own attitude towards popular religion differed
essentially from that of the sophists, we cannot con-
sider him in this connexion. Protagoras's trial
itself is partly determined by special circumstances.
In all probability it took jjlace at a moment when
a violent religious reaction had set in at Athens
owing to some grave offences against the public
worship and sanctuaries of the State (violation of
the Mysteries and mutilation of the Hermae). The
work on the gods had presumably been in existence
and known long before this without causing scandal
to anybody. But, nevertheless, the trial, like those
of Anaxagoras and Socrates, plainly bears witness
to the animosity with which the modern free-
thought was regarded in Athens. This animosity
did not easily manifest itself publicly without

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 41

special reasons ; but it was always there and might
always be used in case of provocation.

As to Protagoras's personal attitude to the
question of the existence of the gods, much may be
guessed and much has been guessed ; but nothing
can be stated for certain. However, judging from
the man's profession and his general habit of life
as it appears in tradition, we may take for granted
that he did not give offence in his outward behaviour
by taking a hostile attitude to public worship or
attacking its foundations ; had that been so, he would
not for forty years have been the most distinguished
teacher of Hellas, but would simply not have been
tolerated. An eminent modern scholar has there-
fore advanced the conjecture that Protagoras
distinguished between belief and knowledge, and
that his work on the gods only aimed at showing
that the existence of the gods could not be scien-
tifically demonstrated. Now such a distinction
probably, if conceived as a conscious principle,
is alien to ancient thought, at any rate at the
time of Protagoras ; and yet it may contain a
grain of truth. When it is borne in mind that the
incriminated passage represents the very exordium
of the work of Protagoras, the impression cannot be
avoided that he himself did not intend his work to
disturb the established religion, but that he quite
naively took up the existence of the gods as a sub-
ject, as good as any other, for dialectic discussion.
All that he was concerned with was theory and
theorising ; religion was practice and ritual ; and
he had no more intention of interfering with that
than the other earlier sophists of assailing the legal

42 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

system of the community in their speculation as to
relativity of right and wrong.

All this, however, does not alter the fact that the
work of Protagoras posed the very question of
the existence of the gods as a problem which might
possibly be solved in the negative. He seems to
have been the first to do this. That it could be
done is significant of the age to which Protagoras
belongs ; that it was done was undoubtedly of
great importance for the development of thought in
wide circles.

Prodicus of Ceos, also one of the most famous
sophists, advanced the idea that the concep-
tions of the gods were originally associated with
those things which were of use to humanity : sun
and moon, rivers and springs, the products of the
earth and the elements ; therefore bread was
identified with Demeter, wine with Dionysus, water
with Poseidon, fire with Hephaestus. As a special
instance he mentioned the worship of the Nile by
the Egyptians.

In Democritus, who was a slightly elder con-
temporary of Prodicus, we have already met with
investigation into the origin of the conceptions of
the gods. There is a close parallel between his
handling of the subject and that of Prodicus, but
at the same time a characteristic difference. Demo-
critus was a naturalist, hence he took as his starting-
point the natural phenomena commonly ascribed to
the influence of the gods. Prodicus, on the other
hand, started from the intellectual life of man. We
learn that he had commenced to study synonyms,
and that he was interested in the interpretation of

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 43

the poets. Now he found that Homer occasionally
simply substituted the name of Hephaestus for fire,
and that other poets went even further on the same
lines. Furthermore, while it was common know-
ledge to every Greek that certain natural objects,
such as the heavenly bodies and the rivers, were
regarded as divine and had names in common with
their gods, this to Prodicus would be a specially
attractive subject for speculation. It is plainly
shown by his instances that it is linguistic observa-
tions of this kind which were the starting-point of
his theory concerning the origin of the conceptions
of the gods.

In the accounts of Prodicus it is taken for granted
that he denied the existence of the gods, and in
later times he is classed as atheos. Nevertheless
we have every reason to doubt the correctness of
this opinion. The case of Democritus already shows
that a philosopher might very well derive the con-
ceptions of the gods from an incorrect interpretation
of certain phenomena without throwing doubt on
their existence. As far as Prodicus is concerned it
may be assumed that he did not believe that Bread,
Wine or Fire were gods, any more than Democritus
imagined that Zeus sent thunder and lightning ;
nor, presumably, did he ever believe that rivers
were gods. But he need not therefore have denied
the existence of Demeter, Dionysus and Hephaestus,
much less the divinity of the sun and the moon.
And if we consider his theory more closely it points
in quite a different direction from that of atheism.
To Prodicus it was evidently the conception of
utility that mattered : if these objects came to be

44 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

regarded as gods it was because they "benefited
humanity." This too is a genuinety sophistic
view, characteristically deviating from that of the
naturalist Democritus in its limitation to the
human and social aspect of the question. Such a
point of view, if confronted with the question of the
existence of the gods, may very well, according to
sophistic methods of reasoning, lead to the con-
clusion that primitive man was right in so far as
the useful, i.e. that which " benefits humanity,"
really is an essential feature of the gods, and wrong
only in so far as he identified the individual useful
objects with the gods. Whether Prodicus adopted
this point of view, we cannot possibly tell ; but
the general body of tradition concerning the man,
which does not in any way suggest religious radi-
calism, indicates as most probable that he did not
connect the question of the origin of the conceptions
of the gods with that of the existence of the gods,
which to him was taken for granted, and that it was
only later philosophers who, in their researches into
the ideas of earlier philosophers about the gods,
inferred his atheism from his speculations on the
history of religion.

Critias, the well-known reactionary politician,
the chief of the Thirty Tyrants, is placed amongst
the atheists on the strength of a passage in a satyric
drama, Sisyphus. The drama is lost, but our
authority quotes the objectionable passage in
extenso ; it is a piece of no less than forty lines.
The passage argues that human life in its origins
knew no social order, that might ruled supreme.
Then men conceived the idea of making laws in

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 45

order that right might rule instead of might. The
result of this was, it is true, that wrong was not done
openly ; but it was done secretly instead. Then a
wise man bethought himself of making men believe
that there existed gods who saw and heard every-
thing which men did, nay even knew their inner-
most thoughts. And, in order that men might stand
in proper awe of the gods, he said that they lived in
the sky, out of which comes that which makes men
afraid, such as lightning and thunder, but also that
which benefits them, sunshine and rain, and the
stars, those fair ornaments by whose course men
measure time. Thus he succeeded in bringing law-
lessness to an end. It is expressly stated that it
was all a cunning fraud : "by such talk he made
his teaching most acceptable, veiling truth with
false words."

In antiquity it was disputed whether the drama
Sisyphus was by Critias or Euripides ; nowadays all
agree in attributing it to Critias ; nor does the style
of the long fragment resemble that of Euripides.
The question is, however, of no consequence in this
connexion : whether the drama is by Critias or
Euripides it is wrong to attribute to an author
opinions which he has put into the mouth of a char-
acter in a drama. Moreover, Sisyphus was a satyric
play, i.e. it belonged to a class of poetry the liberty of
which was nearly as great as in comedy, and the
speech was delivered by Sisyphus himself, who,
according to the legend, is a type of the crafty
criminal whose forte is to do evil and elude punish-
ment. There is, in fact, nothing in that which we
otherwise hear of Critias to suggest that he cherished

46 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

free- thinking views. He was — or in his later years
became — a fanatical adversary of the Attic demo-
cracy, and he was, when he held power, unscrupulous
in his choice of the means with which he opposed
it and the men who stood in the path of his reaction-
ary policy ; but in our earlier sources he is never
accused of impiety in the theoretical sense. And
yet there had been an excellent opportunity of
bringing forward such an accusation ; for in his
youth Critias had been a companion of Socrates,
and his later conduct was used as a proof that
Socrates corrupted his surroundings. But it is
always Critias's political crimes which are adduced
in this connexion, not his irreligion. On the other
hand, posterity looked upon him as the pure type of
tyrant, and the label atheist therefore suggested
itself on the slightest provocation.

But, even if the Sisyphus fragment cannot be
used to characterise its author as an atheist, it is,
nevertheless, of the greatest interest in this con-
nexion, and therefore demands closer analysis.

The introductory idea, that mankind has
evolved from an animal state into higher stages,
is at variance with the earlier Greek conception,
namely, that history begins with a golden age
from which there is a continual decline. The theory
of the fragment is expressed by a series of authors
from the same and the immediately succeeding
period. It occurs in Euripides ; a later and other-
wise little-known tragedian, Moschion, developed
it in detail in a still extant fragment ; Plato
accepted it and made it the basis of his presentation
of the origin of the State ; Aristotle takes it for

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 47

granted. Its source, too, has been demonstrated :
it was presumably Democritus who first advanced
it. Nevertheless the author of the fragment has
hardly got it direct from Democritus, who at this
time was little known at Athens, but from an
intermediary. This intermediary is probably Pro-
tagoras, of whom it is said that he composed a
treatise, The Original State, i.e. the primary state of
mankind. Protagoras was a fellow-townsman of
Democritus, and recorded by tradition as one of his
direct disciples.

In another point also the fragment seems to
betray the influence of Democritus. When it is
said that the wise inventors of the gods made them
dwell in the skies, because from the skies come
those natural phenomena which frighten men, it is
highly suggestive of Democritus's criticism of the
divine explanation of thunder and lightning and the
like. In this case also Protagoras may have been
the intermediary. In his work on the gods he had
every opportunity of discussing the question in
detail. But here we have the theory of Democritus
combined with that of Prodicus in that it is main-
tained that from the skies come also those things
that benefit men, and that they are on this account
also a suitable dwelling-place for the gods. It is
obvious that the author of the fragment (or his
source) was versed in the most modern wisdom.

All this erudition, however, is made to serve
a certain tendency : the well-known tendency to
represent religion as a political invention having
as its object the policing of society. It is a theory
which in antiquity — to its honour be it said — is but

48 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

of rare occurrence. There is a vague indication of
it in Euripides, a more definite one in Aristotle, and
an elaborate application of it in Polybius ; and that
is in reality all. (That many people in more en-
lightened ages upheld religion as a means of keeping
the masses in check, is a different matter.) How-
ever, it is an interesting fact that the Critias frag-
ment is not only the first evidence of the existence
of the theory known to us, but also presumably the
earliest and probably the best known to later anti-
quity. Otherwise we should not find reference for
the theory made to a fragment of a farce, but to a
quotation f^om a philosopher.

This might lead us to conclude that the theory
was Critias's own invention, though, of course, it
would not follow that he himself adhered to it.
But it is more probable that it was a ready-made
modern theory which Critias put into the mouth
of Sisyphus. Not only does the whole character
of the fragment and its scene of action favour this
supposition, but there is also another factor which
corroborates it.

In the Gorgias Plato makes one of the characters,
Callicles — a man of whom we otherwise know
nothing — profess a doctrine which up to a certain
point is almost identical with that of the fragment.
According to Callicles, the natural state (and the
right state ; on this point he is at variance with the
fragment) is that right belongs to the strong. This
state has been corrupted by legislation ; the laws
are inventions of the weak, who are also the majority,
and their aim is to hinder the encroachment of the
strong. If this theory is carried to its conclusion,

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 49

it is obvious that religion must be added to the
laws ; if the former is not also regarded as an
invention for the policing of society, the whole
theory is upset. Now in the Gorgias the question
as to the attitude of the gods towards the problem of
what is right and what is wrong is carefully avoided
in the discussion. Not till the close of the dialogue,
where Plato substitutes myth for scientific research,
does he draw the conclusion in respect of religion.
He does this in a positive form, as a consequence
of his point of view : after death the gods reward
the just and punish the unjust ; but he expressly
assumes that Callicles will regard it all as an old
wives' tale.

In Callicles an attempt has been made to see a
pseudonym for Critias. That is certainly wrong.
Critias was a kinsman of Plato, is introduced by
name in several dialogues, nay, one dialogue even
bears his name, and he is everywhere treated with
respect and sympathy. Nowadays, therefore, it is
generally acknowledged that Callicles is a real
person, merely unknown to us as such. However
that may be, Plato would never have let a leading
character in one of his longer dialogues advance
(and Socrates refute) a view which had no better
authority than a passage in a satyric drama. On
the other hand, there is, as shown above, difficulty
in supposing that the doctrine of the fragment was
stated in the writings of an eminent sophist ; so we
come to the conclusion that it was developed and
diffused in sophistic circles by oral teaching, and
that it became known to Critias and Plato in this
way. Its originator we do not know. We might

/

50 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

think of the sophist Thrasymachus, who in the first
book of Plato's Republic maintains a point of view
corresponding to that of Callicles in Gorgias. But
what we otherwise learn of Thrasymachus is not
suggestive of interest in religion, and the only state-
ment of his as to that kind of thing which has come
down to us tends to the denial of a providence, not
denial of the gods. Quite recently Diagoras of
Melos has been guessed at ; this is empty talk,
resulting at best in substituting x (or NN) for y.

If I have dwelt in such detail on the Sisyphus
fragment, it is because it is our first direct and
unmistakable evidence of ancient atheism. Here
for the first time we meet with the direct statement
which we have searched for in vain among all the
preceding authors : that the gods of popular belief
are fabrication pure and simple and without any
corresponding reality, however remote. /The nature
of our tradition precludes our ascertaining whether
such a statement might have been made earlier ;
but the probability is a priori that it was not. The
whole development of ancient reasoning on religious
questions, as far as we are able to survey it, leads in
reality to the conclusion that atheism as an expressed
(though perhaps not publicly expressed) confession
of faith did not appear till the age of the sophists.

With the Critias fragment we have also brought
to an end the inquiry into the direct statements of
atheistic tendency which have come down to us
from the age of the sophists. The result is, as we see,
rather meagre. But it may be supplemented with
indirect testimonies which prove that there was
more of the thing than the direct tradition would

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 51

lead us to conjecture, and that the denial of the
existence of the gods must have penetrated very
wide circles.

The fullest expression of Attic free-thought at the
end of the fifth century is to be found in the tra-
gedies of Euripides. They are leavened with re-
flections on all possible moral and religious problems,
and criticism of the traditional conceptions of the
gods plays a leading part in them. We shall,
however, have some difficulty in using Euripides as a
source of what people really thought at this period,
partly because he is a very pronounced personality
and by no means a mere mouthpiece for the ideas
of his contemporaries — during his lifetime he was
an object of the most violent animosity owing,
among other things, to his free-thinking views —
partly because he, as a dramatist, was obliged to
put his ideas into the mouths of his characters, so
that in many cases it is difficult to decide how much
is due to dramatic considerations and how much to
the personal opinion of the poet. Even to this day
the religious standpoint of Euripides is matter of
dispute. In the most recent detailed treatment of
the question he is characterised as an atheist,
whereas others regard him merely as a dialectician
who debates problems without having any real
standpoint of his own.

I do not believe that Euripides personally denied
the existence of the gods ; there is too much that
tells against that theory, and, in fact, nothing that
tells directly in favour of it, though he did not quite
escape the charge of atheism even in his own day.
To prove the correctness of this view would, however,

52 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

lead too far afield in this connexion. On the other
hand, a short characterisation of Euripides's manner
of reasoning about religious problems is unavoidable
as a background for the treatment of those — very
rare — passages where he has put actually atheistic
reflections into the mouths of his characters.

As a Greek dramatist Euripides had to derive his
subjects from the heroic legends, which at the same
time were legends of the gods in so far as they were
interwoven with tales of the gods' direct intervention
in affairs. It is precisely against this intervention
that the criticism of Euripides is primarily directed.
Again and again he makes his characters protest
against the manner in which they are treated by
the gods or in which the gods generally behave.
It is characteristic of Euripides that his starting-
point in this connexion is always the moral one.
So far he is a typical representative of that tendency
which, in earlier times, was represented by Xeno-
phanes and a little later by Pindar ; in no other
Greek poet has the method of using the higher con-
ceptions of the gods against the lower found more
complete expression than in Euripides. And in so far,
too, he is still entirely on the ground of popular beUef .
But at the same time it is characteristic of him that
he is familiar with and highly influenced by Greek
science. He knows the most eminent representa-
tives of Ionian naturalism (with the exception of
Democritus), and he is fond of displaying his know-
ledge. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that he uses
it in a contentious spirit against popular belief ; on
the contrary, he is inclined in agreement with the
old philosophers to identify the gods of popular

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 53

belief with the elements. Towards sophistic he
takes a similar, but less sympathetic attitude.
Sophistic was not in vogue till he was a man of
mature age ; he made acquaintance with it, and he
made use of it — there are reflections in his dramas
which carry distinct evidence of sophistic influence ;
but in his treatment of religious problems he is not
a disciple of the sophists, and on this subject, as on
others, he occasionally attacked them.

It is against this background that we must set
the reflections with an atheistic tone that we find in
Euripides. They are, as already mentioned, rare ;
indeed, strictly speaking there is only one case
in which a character openly denies the existence of
the gods. The passage is a fragment of the drama
Bellerophon ; it is, despite its isolation, so typical
of the manner of Euripides that it deserves to be
quoted in full.

"And then to, say that there are gods in the
heavens ! Nay, there are none there ; if you are
not foolish enough to be seduced by the old talk.
Think for yourselves about the matter, and do not be
influenced by my words. I contend that the tyrants
kill the people wholesale, take their money and
destroy cities in spite of their oaths ; and although
they do all this they are happier than people who,
in peace and quietness, lead god-fearing lives.
And I know small states which honour the gods,
but must obey greater states, which are less pious,
because their spearmen are fewer in number. And
I believe that you, if a slothful man just prayed to
the gods and did not earn his bread by the work of

his hands " Here the sense is interrupted ;

5

54 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

but there remains one more line : " That which
builds the castle of the gods is in part the unfortunate
happenings ..." The continuation is missing.

The argumentation here is characteristic of
Euripides. From the injustice of life he infers the
non-existence of the gods. The conclusion evidently
only holds good on the assumption that the gods
must be just ; and this is precisely one of the postu-
lates of popular belief. The reasoning is not soph-
istic ; on the contrary, in their attacks the sophists
took up a position outside the foundation of popular
belief and attacked the foundation itself. This
reasoning, on the other hand, is closely allied to the
earlier religious thinking of the Greeks ; it only
proceeds further than the latter, where it results in
rank denial.

The drama of B eller ophon is lost, and reconstruc-
tion is out of the question ; if only for that reason
it is unwarrantable to draw any conclusions from the
detached fragment as to the poet's personal attitude
towards the existence of the gods. But, neverthe-
less, the fragment is of interest in this connexion.
It would never have occurred to Sophocles or
Aeschylus to put such a speech in the mouth of one
of his characters. When Euripides does that it
is a proof that the question of the existence of the
gods has begun to present itself to the popular
consciousness at this time. Viewed in this light
other statements of his which are not in themselves
atheistic become significant. When it is said :
" If the gods act in a shameful way, they are not
gods " — that indeed is not atheism in our sense, but
it is very near to it. Interesting is also the intro-

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 55

duction to the drama Melanippe : " Zeus, whoever
Zeus may be ; for of that I only know what is told."
Aeschylus begins a strophe in one of his most famous
choral odes with almost the same words : " Zeus,
whoe'er he be ; for if he desire so to be called, I will
address him by this name." In him it is an ex-
pression of genuine antique piety, which excludes
all human impertinence towards the gods to such a
degree that it even forgoes knowing their real names.
In Euripides the same idea becomes an expression of
doubt ; but in this case also the doubt is raised on
the foundation of popular belief.

It is not surprising that so prominent and sus-
tained a criticism of popular belief as that of Euri-
pides, produced, moreover, on the stage, called forth
a reaction from the defenders of the established
faith, and that charges of impiety were not wanting.
It is more to be wondered at that these charges on
the whole are so few and slight, and that Euripides
did not become the object of any actual prosecution.
We know of a private trial in which the accuser
incidentally charged Euripides with impiety on the
strength of a quotation from one of his tragedies,
Euripides's answer being a protest against dragging
his poetry into the affair ; the verdict on that be-
longed to another court. Aristophanes, who is always
severe on Euripides, has only one passage directly
charging him with being a propagator of atheism ;
but the accusation is hardly meant to be taken
seriously. In The Frogs, where he had every oppor-
tunity of emphasising this view, there is hardly an
indication of it. In The Clouds, where the main
attack is directed against modern free-thought,

56 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

Euripides, to be sure, is sneered at as being the
fashionable poet of the corrupted youth, but he is
not drawn into the charge of impiety. Even when
Plato wrote his Republic, Euripides was generally
considered the " wisest of all tragedians." This
would have been impossible if he had been considered
an atheist. In spite of all, the general feeling must
undoubtedly have been that Euripides ultimately
took his stand on the ground of popular belief. It
was a similar instinctive judgment in regard to
religion which prevented antiquity from placing
Xenophanes amongst the atheists. Later times
no doubt judged differently ; the quotation from
Melanippe is in fact cited as a proof that Euripides
was an atheist in his heart of hearts.

In Aristophanes we meet with the first observa-
tions concerning the change in the religious condi-
tions of Athens during the Peloponnesian War.
In one of his plays. The Clouds, he actually set him-
self the task of taking up arms against modern un-
belief, and he characterises it directly as atheism.
If only for that reason the play deserves somewhat
fuller consideration.

It is well known that Aristophanes chose
Socrates as a representative of the modern move-
ment. In him he embodies all the faults with
which he wished to pick a quarrel in the fashionable
philosophy of the day. On the other hand, the
essence of Socratic teaching is entirely absent from
Aristophanes's representation ; of that he had
hardly any understanding, and even if he had he
would at any rate not have been able to make use
of it in his drama. We need not then in this

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 57

connexion consider Socrates himself at all ; on the
other hand, the play gives a good idea of the
popular idea of sophistic. Here we find all the
features of the school, grotesquely mixed up and
distorted by the farce, it is true, but nevertheless
easily recognisable : rhetoric as an end in itself, of
course, with emphasis on its immoral aspect ; empty/
and hair-splitting dialectics ; linguistic researches ;|
Ionic naturalism ; and first and last, as the focus ofj
all, denial of the gods. That Aristophanes was well'
informed on certain points, at any rate, is clear from
the fact that the majority of the scientific explana-
tions which he puts into the mouth of Socrates
actually represent the latest results of science at that
time — which in all probability did not prevent his
Athenians from considering them as exceedingly
absurd and ridiculous.

What matters here, however, is only the accusa-
tion of atheism which he made against Socrates.
It is a little difficult to handle, in so far as Aristo-
phanes, for dramatic reasons, has equipped Socrates
with a whole set of deities. There are the clouds
themselves, which are of Aristophanes's own
invention ; there is also the air, which he has got
from Diogenes of Apollonia, and finally a " vortex "
which is supposed to be derived from the same
source, and which at any rate has cast Zeus down
from his throne. All this we must ignore, as it is
only conditioned partly by technical reasons —
Aristophanes had to have a chorus and chose
the clouds for the purpose — and partially by the
desire to ridicule Ionic naturalism. But enough is
left over. In the beginning of the play Socrates

58 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

expressly declares that no gods exist. Similar
statements are repeated in several places. Zeus is
sometimes substituted for the gods, but it comes to
the same thing. And at the end of the play, where
the honest Athenian, who has ventured on the
ticklish ground of sophistic, admits his delusion, it
is expressly said :

" Oh, what a fool I am ! Nay, I must have been
mad indeed when I thought of throwing the gods
away for Socrates's sake ! "

Even in the verses with which the chorus con-
clude the play it is insisted that the worst crime of
the sophists is their insult to the gods.

The inference to be drawn from all this is simply
that the popular Athenian opinion — for we may rest
assured that this and the view of Aristophanes are
identical — was that the sophists were atheists.
That says but little. For popular opinion always
works with broad categories, and the probability
is that in this case, as demonstrated above, it was in
the wrong, for, as a rule, the sophists were hardly
conscious deniers of the gods. But, at the same
time, at the back of the onslaught of Aristophanes
there lies the idea that the teaching of the sophists
led to denial of the gods ; that atheism was the
natural outcome of their doctrine and way of reason-
ing. And that there was some truth therein is
proved by other evidence which can hardly be
rejected.

In the indictment of Socrates it is said that he
" offended by not believing in the gods in which the
State believed." In the two apologies for Socrates
which have come down to us under Xenophon's

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 59

name, the author treats this accusation entirely
under the aspect of atheism, and tries to refute it
by positive proofs of the piety of Socrates. But
not one word is said about there being, in and for
itself, anything remarkable or improbable in the
charge. In Plato's Apology, Plato makes Socrates
ask the accuser point-blank whether he is of the
opinion that he, Socrates, does not believe in the
gods at all and accordingly is a downright denier
of the gods, or whether he merely means to say that
he believes in other gods than those of the State.
He makes the accuser answer that the assertion is
that Socrates does not believe in any gods at all.
In Plato Socrates refutes the accusation indirectly,
using a line of argument entirely differing from that
of Xenophon. But in Plato, too, the accusation
is treated as being in no way extraordinary. In
my opinion, Plato's Apology cannot be used as
historical evidence for details unless special reasons
can be given proving their historical value beyond
the fact that they occur in the Apology. But in
this connexion the question is not what was said or
not said at Socrates's trial. The decisive point is
that we possess two quite independent and unam-
biguous depositions by two fully competent wit-
nesses of the beginning of the fourth century which
both treat of the charge of atheism as something
which is neither strange nor surprising at their time.
It is therefore permissible to conclude that in Athens
at this time there really existed circles or at any rate
not a few individuals who had given up the belief
in the popular gods.

A dialogue between Socrates and a young man

60 ATHEISM IN PAGAN A^NTIQUITY

by name Aristodemus, given in Xenophon's Mem-
orabilia, makes the same impression. Of Aristo-
demus it is said that he does not sacrifice to the gods,
does not consult the Oracle and ridicules those who
do so. When he is called to account for this be-
haviour he maintains that he does not despise " the
divine," but is of the opinion that it is too exalted
to need his worship. Moreover, he contends that
the gods do not trouble themselves about mankind.
This is, of course, not atheism in our sense ; but
Aristodemus's attitude is, nevertheless, extremely
eccentric in a community like that of Athens in the
fifth century. And yet it is not mentioned as
anything isolated and extraordinary, but as if it were
something which, to be sure, was out of the common,
but not unheard of.

It is further to be observed that at the end of the
fifth century we often hear of active sacrilegious
outrages. An example is the historic trial of Alci-
biades for profanation of the Mysteries. But this
was not an isolated occurrence ; there were more of
the same kind at the time. Of the dithyrambic
poet Cinesias it is said that he profaned holy things
in an obscene manner. But the greatest stress of
all must be laid on the well-known mutilation of
the Hermae at Athens in 415, just before the expedi-
tion to Sicily. All the tales about the outrages of
the Mysteries may have been fictitious, but it is a
fact that the Hermae were mutilated. The motive
was probably political : the members of a secret
society intended to pledge themselves to each other
by all committing a capital crime. But that they
chose just this form of crime shows quite clearly

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 61

that respect for the State reUgion had greatly
dechned in these circles.

What has so far been adduced as proof that the
belief in the gods had begun to waver in Athens at
the end of the fifth century is, in my opinion, conclu-
sive in itself to anybody who is f amihar with the more
ancient Greek modes of thought and expression on
this point, and can not only hear what is said, but
also understand how it is said and what is passed
over in silence. Of course it can always be objected
that the proofs are partly the assertions of a comic
poet who certainly was not particular about accusa-
tions of impiety, partly deductions ex silentio,
partly actions the motives for which are uncertain.
Fortunately, however, we have — from a slightly
later period, it is true — a positive utterance which
confirms our conclusion and which comes from a
man who was not in the habit of talking idly and
who had the best opportunities of knowing the
circumstances.

[''In the tenth book of his Laws, written shortly
before his death, i.e. about the middle of the fourth
century, Plato gives a detailed account of the
question of irreligion seen from the point of view
of penal legislation. He distinguishes here between
three forms, namely, denial of the existence of the
gods, denial of the divine providence (whereas the
existence of the gods is admitted), and finally the
assumption that the gods exist and exercise provi-
dence, but that they allow themselves to be in-
fluenced by sacrifices and prayers. Of these three
categories the last is evidently directed against
ancient popular belief itself ; it does not therefore

62 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

interest us in this connexion. The second view,
the denial of a providence, we have already met with
in Xenophon in the character of Aristodemus, and
in the sophist Thrasymachus ; Euripides, too,
sometimes alludes to it, though it was far from
being his own opinion. Whether it amounted to
denial of the gods or not was, in ancient times, the
cause of much dispute ; it is, of course, not atheism
in our sense, but it is certainly evidence that belief
in the gods is shaken. The first view, on the other
hand, is sheer atheism. Plato consequently reckons
with this as a serious danger to the community ;
he mentions it as a widespread view among the
youth of his time, and in his legislation he sentences
to death those who fail to be converted. It would
seem certain, therefore, that there was, in reality,
something in it after all.

y Plato does not confine himself to defining
atheism and laying down the penalty for it ; he
at the same time, in accordance with a principle
which he generally follows in the Laws, discusses
it and tries to disprove it. In this way he happens
to give us information — which is of special interest
to us — of the proofs which were adduced by its
followers.

f The argument is a twofold one. First comes
the naturalistic proof ; the heavenly bodies,
according to the general (and Plato's own) view the
most certain deities, are inanimate natural objects.
It is interesting to note that in speaking of this
doctrine in detail reference is clearly made to
Anaxagoras ; this confirms our afore-mentioned
conjectures as to the character of his work. Plato

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 63

was quite in a position to deal with Anaxagoras on
the strength not only of what he said, but of what
he passed over in silence. The second argument
is the well-known sophistic one, that the gods are
nomoi, not physei, they depend upon convention,
which has nothing to do with reality. In this
connexion the argument adds that what applies
to the gods, applies also to right and wrong ; i.e.
we find here in the Laws the view with which we are
familiar from Callicles in the Gorgias, but with the
missing link supplied. And Plato's development of
this theme shows clearly just what a general historical
consideration might lead us to expect, namely, that
it was naturalism and sophistic that jointly under-
mined the belief in the old gods.

CHAPTER V

WITH Socrates and his successors the wholeN
question of the relation of Greek thought
to popular belief enters upon a new phase^^
The Socratic philosophy is in many ways a con-
tinuation of sophistic. This is involved already in
the fact that the same questions form the central
interest in the two schools of thought, so that the
problems stated by the sophists became the decisive
factor in the content of Socratic and Platonic
thought. The Socratic schools at the same time
took over the actual programme of the sophists,
namely, the education of adolescence in the highest
culture. But, on the other hand, the Socratic philo-
sophy was in the opposite camp to sophistic ; on
many points it represents a reaction against it, a
recollection of the valuable elements contained in
earlier Greek thought on life, especially human life,
values which sophistic regarded with indifference or
even hostility, and which were threatened with
destruction if it should carry the day. This re-
actionary tendency in Socratic philosophy appears
nowhere more plainly than in the field of religion.

Under these circumstances it is a peculiar irony
of fate that the very originator of the new trend in
Greek thought was charged with and sentenced for

impiety. We have already mentioned the singular

64

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 65

prelude to the indictment afforded by the comedy of
Aristophanes. We have also remarked upon the
futility of looking therein for any actual enlighten-
ment on the Socratic point of view. And Plato
makes Socrates state this with all necessary sharp-
ness in the Apology. Hence what we may infer from
the attack of Aristophanes is merely this, that the
general public lumped Socrates together with the
sophists and more especially regarded him as a
godless fellow. Unless this had been so, Aristo-
phanes could not have introduced him as the chief
character in his travesty. And without doubt it
was this popular point of view which his accusers
relied on when they actually included atheism as a
count in their bill of indictment. It will, neverthe-
less, be necessary to dwell for a moment on this bill
of indictment and the defence.

The charge of impiety was a twofold one, partly
for not believing in the gods the State believed in,
partly for introducing new " demonic things."
This latter act was directly punishable according
to Attic law. What his accusers alluded to was the
daimonion of Socrates. That they should have had
any idea of what that was must be regarded as utterly
out of the question, and whatever it may have been
— and of this we shall have a word to say later —
it had at any rate nothing whatever to do with
atheism. As to the charge of not believing in the
gods of the State, Plato makes the accuser prefer it
in the form that Socrates did not believe in any gods
at all, after which it becomes an easy matter for
Socrates to show that it is directly incompatible
with the charge of introducing new deities. As

66 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

ground for his accusation the accuser states — in
Plato, as before — that Socrates taught the same
doctrine about the sun and moon as Anaxagoras.
The whole of the passage in the Apology in which the
question of the denial of gods is dealt with — a short
dialogue between Socrates and the accuser, quite
in the Socratic manner — historically speaking,
carries little conviction, and we therefore dare not
take it for granted that the charge either of atheism
or of false doctrine about the sun and moon was
put forward in that form. But that something
about this latter point was mentioned during the
trial must be regarded as probable, when we con-
sider that Xenophon, too, defends Socrates at some
length against the charge of concerning himself with
speculations on Nature. That he did not do so
must be taken for certain, not only from the express
evidence of Xenophon and Plato, but from the whole
nature of the case. The accusation on this point
was assuredly pure fabrication. There remains
only what was no doubt also the main point,
namely, the assertion of the pernicious influence of
Socrates on the young, and the inference of ir-
religion to be drawn from it — an argument which
it would be absurd to waste any words upon.

The attack, then, affords no information about
Socrates's personal point of view as regards belief in
the gods, and the defence only very little. Both
Xenophon and Plato give an account of Socrates's
daimonion, but this point has so little relation to
the charge of atheism that it is not worth examina-
tion. For the rest Plato's defence is indirect. He
makes Socrates refute his opponent, but does not

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 67

let him say a word about his own point of view.
Xenophon is more positive, in so far as in the first
place he asserts that Socrates worshipped the gods
like any other good citizen, and more especially
that he advised his friends to use the Oracle ; in
the second place, that, though he lived in full pub-
licity, no one ever saw him do or heard him say
anything of an impious nature. All these assertions
are assuredly correct, and they render it highly
improbable that Socrates should have secretly
abandoned the popular faith, but they tell us little
that is positive about his views. Fortunately we
possess other means of getting to closer grips with
the question ; the way must be through a con-
sideration of Socrates's whole conduct and his mode
of thought.

Here we at once come to the interesting negative
fact that there is nothing in tradition to indicate
that Socrates ever occupied himself with theological
questions. To be sure, Xenophon has twice put
into his mouth a whole theodicy expressing an
elaborate teleological view of nature. But that we
dare not base anything upon this is now, I think,
universally acknowledged. Plato, in the dialogue
Euthyphron, makes him subject the popular notion of
piety to a devastating criticism ; but this, again, will
not nowadays be regarded as historical by anybody.
Everything we are told about Socrates which bears
the stamp of historical truth indicates that he
restricted himself to ethics and left theology alone.
But this very fact is not without significance. It
indicates that Socrates's aim was not to alter the
reUgious views of his contemporaries. Since he

68 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

did not do so we may reasonably believe it was
because they did not inconvenience him in what
was most important to him, i.e. ethics.

We may, however, perhaps go even a step
farther. We may venture, I think, to maintain
that so far from contemporary religion being a
hindrance to Socrates in his occupation as a teacher
of ethics, it was, on the contrary, an indispensable
support to him, nay, an integral component of his
fundamental ethical view. The object of Socrates
in his relations with his fellow-men was, on his own
showing — for on this important point I think we can
confidently rely upon Plato's Apology — to make
clear to them that they knew nothing. And when
he was asked to say in what he himself differed from
other people, he could mention only one thing,
namely, that he was aware of his own ignorance.
But his ignorance is not an ignorance of this thing
or that, it is a radical ignorance, something involved
in the essence of man as man. That is, in other
words, it is determined by religion. In order to be
at all intelligible and ethically applicable, it pre-
supposes the conception of beings of whom the
essence is knowledge. For Socrates and his con-
temporaries the popular belief supplied such beings
in the gods. The institution of the Oracle itself is
an expression of the recognition of the superiority
of the gods to man in knowledge. But the dogma
had long been stated even in its absolute form when
Homer said : " The gods know everything." To
Socrates, who always took his starting-point quite
popularly from notions that were universally ac-
cepted, this basis was simply indispensable. And

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 69

so far from inconveniencing Socrates, the multi-
plicity and anthropomorphism of the gods seemed an
advantage to him — the more they were like man in
all but the essential qualification, the better.

The Socratic ignorance has an ethical bearing.
Its complement is his assertion that virtue is know-
ledge. Here again the gods are the necessary pre-
supposition and determination. That the gods were
good, or, as it was preferred to express it, " just "
(the Greek word comprises more than the English
word), was no less a popular dogma than the notion
that they possessed knowledge. Now all Socrates's
efforts were directed towards goodness as an end in
view, towards the ethical development of mankind.
Here again popular belief was his best ally. To the
people to whom he talked, virtue (the Greek word
is at once both wider and narrower in sense than the
English term) was no mere abstract notion ; it was a
living reality to them, embodied in beings that were ^
like themselves, human beings, but perfect human
beings.

If we correlate this with the negative circum-
stance that Socrates was no theologian but a teacher
of ethics, we can easily understand a point of view
which accepted popular belief as it was and employed
it for working purposes in the service of moral teach-
ing. Such a point of view, moreover, gained extra-
ordinary strength by the fact that it preserved con-
tinuity with earlier Greek religious thought. This
latter, too, had been ethical in its bearing ; it, too,
had employed the gods in the service of its ethical
aim. But its central idea was felicity, not virtue ; its

starting-point was the popular dogma of the felicity
6

70 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

of the gods, not their justice. In this way it had
come to lay stress on a virtue which might be
termed modesty, but in a rehgious sense, i.e. man
must recognise his difference from the gods as a
Hmited being, subject to the vicissitudes of an
existence abovewhich the gods are raised. Socrates
says just the same, only that he puts knowledge or
virtue, which to him was the same thing, in the
place of felicity. From a religious point of view the
result is exactly the same, namely, the doctrine of
the gods as the terminus and ideal, and the insistence
on the gulf separating man from them. We are
tempted to say that, had Socrates turned with
hostile intent against a religion which thus played
into his hands, the more fool he. But this is putting
the problem the wrong way up — Socrates never
stood critically outside popular belief and tradi-
tional religious thought speculating as to whether
he should use it or reject it. No, his thought grew
out of it as from the bosom of the earth. Hence its
mighty religious power, its inevitable victory over a
school of thought which had severed all connexion
with tradition.

That such a point of view should be so badly
misunderstood as it was in Athens seems incompre-
hensible. The explanation is no doubt that the
whole story of Socrates's denial of the gods was only
included by his accusers for the sake of completeness,
and did not play any great part in the final issue.
This seems confirmed by the fact that they found it
convenient to support their charge of atheism by one
of introducing foreign gods, this being punishable by
Attic law. They thus obtained some slight hold foj

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 71

their accusation. But both charges must be pre-
sumed to have been so signally refuted during the
trial that it is hardly possible that any great number
of the judges were influenced by them. It was quite
different and far weightier matters which brought
about the conviction of Socrates, questions on which
there was really a deep and vital difference of
opinion between him and his contemporaries. That
Socrates's attitude towards popular belief was at
any rate fully understood elsewhere is testified by
the answer of the Delphic Oracle, that declared
Socrates to be the wisest of all men. However
remarkable such a pronouncement from such a place
may appear, it seems impossible to reject the
accounts of it as unhistorical ; on the other hand,
it does not seem impossible to explain how the
Oracle came to declare itself as reported. Earlier
Greek thought, which insisted upon the gulf sepa-
rating gods and men, was from olden times inti-
mately connected with the Delphic Oracle. It hardly
sprang from there ; more probably it arose spon-
taneously in various parts of Hellas. But it would
naturally feel attracted toward the Oracle, which
was one of the religious centres of Hellas, and it was
recognised as legitimate by the Oracle. Above all,
the honour shown by the Oracle to Pindar, one of the
chief representatives of the earlier thought, testifies
to this. Hence there is nothing incredible in the
assumption that Socrates attracted notice at Delphi
as a defender of the old-fashioned religious views
approved by the Oracle, precisely in virtue of his
opposition to the ideas then in vogue.

If we accept this explanation we are, however,

72 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

excluded from taking literally Plato's account of
the answer of the Delphic Oracle and Socrates's
attitude towards it. Plato presents the case as if
the Oracle were the starting-point of Socrates's
philosophy and of the peculiir mode of life which
was indissolubly bound up with it. This presenta-
tion cannot be correct if we are to regard the Oracle
as historical and understand it as we have under-
stood it. The Oracle presupposes the Socrates we
know : a man with a religious message and a mode
of life which was bound to attract notice to him as an
exception from the general rule. It cannot, there-
fore, have been the cause of Socrates's finding himself.
On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine a man
choosing a mode of life like that of Socrates without
a definite inducement, without some fact or other
that would lead him to conceive himself as an
exception from the rule. If we look for such a fact
in the life of Socrates, we shall look in vain as regards
externals. Apart from his activities as a religious
and ethical personality, his life was that of any other
Attic citizen. But in his spiritual life there was
certainly one point, but only one, on which he
deviated from the normal, namely, his daimonion.
If we examine the accounts of this more closely the
only thing we can make of them is — or so at least it
seems to me — that we are here in the presence of a
form — peculiar, no doubt, and highly developed — of
the phenomena which are nowadays classed under
the concept of clairvoyance. Now Plato makes
Socrates himself say that the power of avoiding what
would harm him, in great things and little, by virtue
of a direct perception (a " voice "), which is what

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 73

constituted his daimonion, was given him from
childhood. That it was regarded as something
singular both by himself and others is evident, and
likewise that he himself regarded it as something
supernatural; the designation daimonion itself seems
to be his own. I think that we must seek for
the origin of Socrates's peculiar mode of life in this
direction, strange as it may be that a purely mystic
element should have given the impulse to the most
rationalistic philosophy the world has ever produced.
It is impossible to enter more deeply into this prob-
lem here ; but, if my conjecture is correct, we have
an additional explanation of the fact that Socrates
was disposed to anything rather than an attack on
the established religion.

A view of popular religion such as I have here
sketched bore in itself the germ of a further devel-
opment which must lead in other directions. A
personality like Socrates might perhaps manage
throughout a lifetime to keep that balance on a
razor's edge which is involved in utilising to the
utmost in the service of ethics the popular dogmas
of the perfection of the gods, while disregarding all
irrelevant tales, all myths and all notions of too
human a tenor about them. This demanded con-
centration on the one thing needful, in conjunction
with deep piety of the most genuine antique kind,
with the most profound religious modesty, a com-
bination which it was assuredly given to but one
man to attain. Socrates's successors had it not.
Starting precisely from a Socratic foundation they
entered upon theological speculations which carried
them away from the Socratic point of view.

74 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

For the Cynics, who set up virtue as the only good,
the popular notions of the gods would seem to have
been just as convenient as for Socrates. And we
know that Antisthenes, the founder of the school,
made ample use of them in his ethical teaching. He
represented Heracles as the Cynical ideal and oc-
cupied himself largely with allegorical interpreta-
tion of the myths. On the other hand, there is a
tradition that hé maintained that " according to
nature " there was only one god, but " according to
the law " several — a purely sophistic view. He in-
veighed against the worship of images, too, and
maintained that god " did not resemble any thing,"
and we know that his school rejected all worship of
the gods because the gods " were in need of nothing."
This conception, too, is presumably traceable to
Antisthenes. In all this the theological interest is
evident. As soon as this interest sets in, the har-
monious relation to the popular faith is upset, the
discord between its higher and lower ideas becomes
manifest, and criticism begins to assert itself. In
the case of Antisthenes, if we may believe tradition,
it seems to have led to monotheism, in itself a most
remarkable phenomenon in the history of Greek
religion, but the material is too slight for us to make
anything of it. The later Cynics afford interesting
features in illustration of atheism in antiquity, but
this is best left to a later chapter.

About the relations of the Megarians to the
popular faith we know next to nothing. One of
them, Stilpo, was charged with impiety on account
of a bad joke about Athene, and convicted, although
he tried to save himself by another bad joke. As

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 75

his point of view was that of a downright sceptic,
he was no doubt an atheist according to the notions
of antiquity ; in our day he would be called an
agnostic, but the information that we have about his
religious standpoint is too slight to repay dwelling
on him.

As to the relation of the Cyrenaic school to the
popular faith, the general proposition has been
handed down to us that the wise man could not be
" deisidaimon," i.e. superstitious or god-fearing ;
the Greek word can have both senses. This does
not speak for piety at any rate, but then the re-
lationship of the Cyrenaics to the gods of popular
belief was different from that of the other followers
of Socrates. As they set up pleasure — the momen-
tary, isolated feeling of pleasure — as the supreme
good, they had no use for the popular conceptions
of the gods in their ethics, nay, these conceptions
were even a hindrance to them in so far as the fear
of the gods might prove a restriction where it ought
not to. In these circumstances we cannot wonder
at finding a member of the school in the list of
atheoi. This is Theodorus of Cyrene, who lived
about the year 300. He really seems to have been
a downright denier of the gods ; he wrote a work
On the Gods containing a searching criticism of
theology, which is said to have exposed him to
unpleasantness during a stay at Athens, but the then
ruler of the city, Demetrius of Phalerum, protected
him. There is nothing strange in a manifestation
of downright atheism at this time and from this
quarter. More remarkable is that interest in theo-
logy which we must assume Theodorus to have had,

76 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

since he wrote at length upon the subject. Unfortu-
nately it is not evident from the account whether his
criticism was directed mostly against popular religion
or against the theology of the philosophers. As it
was asserted in antiquity that Epicurus used his book
largely, the latter is more probable.

Whereas in the case of the " imperfect Socratics '*
as well as of all the earlier philosophers we must
content ourselves with more or less casual notes, and
at the best with fragments, and for Socrates with
second-hand information, when we come to Plato
we find ourselves for the first time in the presence
of full and authentic information. Plato belongs
to those few among the ancient authors of whom
everything that their contemporaries possessed has
been preserved to our own day. There would,
however, be no cause to speak about Plato in an
investigation of atheism in antiquity, had not so
eminent a scholar as Zeller roundly asserted that
Plato did not believe in the Greek gods — with the
exception of the heavenly bodies, in the case of which
the facts are obvious. On the other hand, it is
impossible here to enter upon a close discussion of so
large a question ; I must content myself with giving
my views in their main lines, with a brief statement
of my reasons for holding them.

In the mythical portions of his dialogues Plato
uses the gods as a given poetic motive and treats
them with poetic licence. Otherwise they play a
very inferior part in the greater portion of his works.
In the Euthyphron he gives a sharp criticism of the
popular conception of piety, and in reality at the
same time very seriously questions the importance

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 77

and value of the existing form of worship. In his
chief ethical work, the Gorgias, he subjects the funda-
mental problems of individual ethics to a close dis-
cussion without saying one word of their relation to
religion ; if we except the mythic part at the end the
gods scarcely appear in the dialogue. Finally, in
his Republic he no doubt gives a detailed criticism
of popular mythology as an element of education,
and in the course of this also some positive defini-
tions of the idea of God, but throughout the con-
struction of his ideal community he entirely dis-
regards religion and worship, even if he occasionally
takes it for granted that a cult of some sort exists,
and in one place quite casually refers to the Oracle
at Delphi as authority for its organisation in details.
To this may further be added the negative point
that he never in any of his works made Socrates
define his position in regard to the sophistic treat-
ment of the popular religion.

- In Plato's later works the case is different. In
the construction of the universe described in the
Timaeus the gods have a definite and significant place,
and in the Laws, Plato's last work, they play a
leading part. Here he not only gives elaborate
rules for the organisation of the worship which per-
meate the whole life of the community, but even in
the argument of the dialogue the gods are every-
where in evidence in a way which strongly suggests
bigotry. Finally, Plato gives the above-mentioned
definitions of impiety and fixes the severest punish-
ment for it — for downright denial of the gods,
when all attempts at conversion have failed, the
penalty of death.

78 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

On this evidence we are tempted to take the ^iew
that Plato in his earHer years took up a critical
attitude in regard to the gods of popular belief,
perhaps even denied them altogether, that he
gradually grew more conservative, and ended by
being a confirmed bigot. And we might look for a
corroboration of this in a peculiar observation in the
Laws. jPlato opens his admonition to the young
against atheism by reminding them that they are
young, and that false opinion concerning the gods is
a common disease among the young, but that utter
denial of their existence is not wont to endure to
old age. In this we might ' see an expression of
personal religious experience. \

Nevertheless I do not think such a construction
of Plato's religious development feasible. A deci-
sive objection is his exposition of the Socratic point
of view in so early a work as the Apology. I at any
rate regard it as psychologically impossible that a
downright atheist, be he ever so great a poet, should
be able to draw such a picture of a deeply religious
personality, and draw it with so much sympathy
and such convincing force. Add to this other facts
of secondary moment. Even the close criticism
to which Plato subjects the popular notions of the
gods in his Republic does not indicate denial of the
gods as such ; moreover, it is built on a positive
foundation, on the idea of the goodness of the gods
and their truth (which for Plato manifests itself in
immutability) . Finally, Plato at all times vigorously
advocated the belief in providence. In the Laws he
stamps unbelief in divine providence as impiety ; in
the Republic he insists in a prominent passage that

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 79

the gods love the just man and order everything for
him in the best way. And he puts the same thought
into Socrates's mouth in the Apology, though it is
hardly Socratic in the strict sense of the word, i.e. as
a main point in Socrates's conception of existence.
All this should warn us not to exaggerate the signifi-
cance of the difference which may be pointed out
between the religious standpoints of the younger and
the older Plato. But the difference itself cannot, I
think, be denied ; there can hardly be any doubt
that Plato was much more critical of popular belief
in his youth and prime than towards the close of
his life.

Even in Plato's later works there is, in spite of
their conservative attitude, a very peculiar reserva-

/tion in regard to the anthropomorphic gods of
popular belief. It shows itself in the Laws in the

Mact that where he sets out to prove the existence
of the gods he contents himself with proving the
divinity of the heavenly bodies and quite disregards
the other gods. It appears still more plainly in the
Timaeus, where he gives a philosophical explanation
of how the divine heavenly bodies came into exist-
ence, but says expressly of the other gods that such
an explanation is impossible, and that we must
abide by what the old theologians said on this
subject ; they being partly the children of gods

. would know best where their parents came from.

' It is observations of this kind that induced Zeller
to believe that Plato altogether denied the gods of

V popular belief ; he also contends that the gods have

^no place in Plato's system. This latter contention is
perfectly correct ; Plato never identified the gods

80 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

with the ideas (although he comes very near to it
in the Republic, where he attributes to them im-
mutabiUty, the quahty which determines the essence
of the ideas), and in the Timaeus he distinguishes
sharply between them. No doubt his doctrine of
ideas led up to a kind of divinity, the idea of the
good, as the crown of the system, but the direct
inference from this conception would be pure mono-
theism and so exclude polytheism. This inference
Plato did not draw, though his treatment of the
gods in the Laws and Timaeus certainly shows that
he was quite clear that the gods of the popular faith
were an irrational element in his conception of the
universe. The two passages do not entitle us to go
further and conclude that he utterly rejected them,
and in the Timaeus, where Plato makes both classes of
gods, both the heavenly bodies and the others, take
part in the creation of man, this is plainly precluded.
The playful turn with which he evades inquiry into
the origin of the gods thus receives its proper
limitation ; it is entirely confined to their origin.

Such, according to my view, is the state of the
case. It is of fundamental importance to emphasise
the fact that we cannot conclude, because the gods
of popular belief do not fit into the system of a
philosopher, that he denies their existence. In
what follows we shall have occasion to point out a
case in which, as all are now agreed, a philosophical
school has adopted and stubbornly held to the belief
in the existence of gods though this assumption was
directly opposed to a fundamental proposition in its
system of doctrine. The case of Plato is particularly
interesting because he himself was aware and has

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 81

pointed out that here was a point on which the con-
sistent scientific application of his conception of the
universe must fail. It is the outcome — one of
many — of what is perhaps his finest quality as a
philosopher, namely, his intellectual honesty.

An indirect testimony to the correctness of the
view here stated will be found in the way in which
Plato's faithful disciple Xenocrates developed his
theology, for it shows that Xenocrates presup-
posed the existence of the gods of popular belief as
given by Plato. Xenocrates made it his general
task to systematise Plato's philosophy (which had
never been set forth publicly by himself as a whole),
and to secure it against attack. In the course of
this work he was bound to discover that the con-
ception of the gods of popular belief was a particu-
larly weak point in Plato's system, and he attempted
to mend matters by a peculiar theory which became
of the greatest importance for later times. Xeno-
crates set up as gods, in the first place, the heavenly
bodies. Next he gave his highest principles (pure
abstracts such as oneness and twoness) and the
elements of his universe (air, water and earth) the
names of some of the highest divinities in popular
belief (Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Demeter). These
gods, however, did not enter into direct com-
munication with men, but only through some inter-
mediate agent. The intermediate agents were the
" demons," a class of beings who were higher than
man yet not perfect hke the gods. They were, it
seems, immortal ; they were invisible and far more
powerful than human beings ; but they were subject
to human passions and were of highly differing

82 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

grades of moral perfection. These are the beings
that are the objects of the greater part of the existing
cult, especially such usages as rest on the assumption
that the gods can do harm and are directed towards
averting it, or which are in other ways objection-
able ; and with them are connected the myths which
Plato subjected to so severe a criticism. Xeno-
crates found a basis for this system in Plato, who
in the Symposium sets up the demons as a class of
beings between gods and men, and makes them
carriers of the prayers and wishes of men to the
gods. But what was a passing thought with Plato
serving only a poetical purpose was taken seriously
and systematised by Xenocrates.

It can hardly be said that Xenocrates has
gained much recognition among modern writers on
the history of philosophy for his theory of demons.
And yet I cannot see that there was any other
possible solution of the problem which ancient
popular belief set ancient philosophy, if, be it under-
stood, we hold fast by two hypotheses : the first,
that the popular belief and worship of the ancients
was based throughout on a foundation of reality ;
and second, that moral perfection is an essential
factor in the conception of God. The only incon-
sistency which we may perhaps bring home to
Xenocrates is that he retained certain of the
popular names of the gods as designations for gods
in his sense ; but this inconsistency was, as we shall
see, subsequently removed. In favour of this
estimate of Xenocrates's doctrine of demons may
further be adduced that it actually was the last
word of ancient philosophy on the matter. The

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 83

doctrine was adopted by the Stoics, the Neo-
Pythagoreans, and the Neo-Platonists. Only the
Epicureans went another way, but their doctrine
died out before the close of antiquity. And so th^e
doctrine of demons became the ground on which
Jewish-Christian monotheism managed to come to
terms with ancient paganism, to conquer it in
theory, as it were.

This implies, however, that the doctrine of
demons, though it arose out of an honest attempt to
save popular belief philosophically, in reality brings
out its incompatibility with philosophy. The re-
ligion and worship of the ancients could dispense
with neither the higher nor the lower conceptions of
its gods. If the former were done away with,
recognition, however full, of the existence of the
gods was no good ; in the long run the inference
could not be avoided that they were immoral powers
and so ought not to be worshipped. This was the
inference drawn by Christianity in theory and en-
forced in practice, ultimately by main force.

Aristotle is among the philosophers who were
prosecuted for impiety. When the anti-Macedonian
party came into power in Athens after the death of
Alexander, there broke out a persecution against
his adherents, and this was also directed against
Aristotle. The basis of the charge against him
was that he had shown divine honour after his death
to the tyrant Hermias, whose guest he had been
during a prolonged stay in Asia Minor. This seems
to have been a fabrication, and at any rate has
nothing to do with atheism. In the writings of
Aristotle, as they were then generally known, it

-.^

84 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

would assuredly have been impossible to find any-
ground for a charge of atheism.

Nevertheless, Aristotle is one of the philosophers
?bout whose faith in the gods of popular religion
well-founded doubts may be raised. Like Plato, he
acknowledged the divinity of the heavenly bodies
on the ground that they must have a soul since they
had independent motion. Further, he has a kind of
supreme god who, himself unmoved, is the cause of
all movement, and whose constituent quality is
reason. As regards the gods of popular belief, in
his Ethics and his Politics he assumes public worship
to be a necessary constituent of the life of the in-
dividual and the community. He gave no grounds
for this assumption — on the contrary, he expressly
declared that it was a question which ought not to
be discussed at all : he who stirs up doubts whether
honour should be paid to the gods is in need not of
teaching but of punishment. (That he himself took
part in worship is evident from his will.) Further,
in his ethical works he used the conceptions of the
gods almost in the same way as we have assumed
that Socrates did, i.e. as the ethical ideal and deter-
mining the limits of the human. He never entered
upon any elaborate criticism of the lower elements
of popular religion such as Plato gave. So far
everything is in admirable order. But if we look
more closely at things there is nevertheless nearly
always a little " but " in Aristotle's utterances
about the gods. Where he operates with popular
notions he prefers to speak hypothetically or to refer
to what is generally assumed ; or he is content to
use only definitions which will also agree with his

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 85

own philosophical conception of God. But he goes
further ; in a few places in his writings there are
utterances which it seems can only be interpreted
as a radical denial of the popular religion. , The most
important of them deserves to be quoted in extenso :

" A tradition has been handed down from
the ancients and from the most primitive times,
and left to later ages in the form of myth, that
these substances {i.e. sky and heavenly bodies)
are gods and that the divine embraces all
nature. The rest consists in legendary additions'^
intended to impress the multitude and serve the 1
purposes of legislation and the common weal ; for
these gods are said to have human shape or resemble
certain other beings (animals), and they say other
things which follow from this and are of a similar
kind to those already mentioned. But if we dis-
regard all this and restrict ourselves to the first
point, that they thought that the first substances
were gods, we must acknowledge that it is a divinely
inspired saying. And as, in all probability, every
art and science has been discovered many times, as
far as it is possible, and has perished again, so these
notions, too, may have been preserved till now as
relics of those times. To this extent only can we
have any idea of the opinion which was held by our
fathers and has come down from the beginning of
things."

The last sentences, expressing Aristotle's idea of
a life-cycle and periods of civilisation which repeat
themselves, have only been included in the quotation
for the sake of completeness. If we disregard them,
the passage plainly enough states the view that the
7

86 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

only element of truth in the traditional notions
about the gods was the divinity of the sky and the
heavenly bodies ; the rest is myth. Aristotle has
nowhere else expressed himself with such distinct-
ness and in such length, but then the passage in
question has a place of its own. It comes in his
Metaphysics directly after the exposition of his
philosophical conception of God — a position marked
by profound earnestness and as it were irradiated
by a quiet inner fervour. We feel that we are here
approaching the sanctum sanctorum of the thinker.
In this connexion, and only here, he wished for once
to state his opinion about the religion of his time
without reserve. What he says here is a precise
formulation of the result arrived at by the best
Greek thinkers as regards the religion of the Greek
people. It was not, they thought, pure fabrication.
It contained an element of truth of the greatest
value. But most of it consisted of human inven-
tions without any reality behind them.

A point of view like that of Aristotle would, I
suppose, hardly have been called atheism among the
ancients, if only because the heavenly bodies were
acknowledged as divine. But according to our defi-
nition it is atheism. The " sky "-gods of Aristotle
have nothing in common with the gods of popular
belief, not even their names, for Aristotle never
names them. And the rest, the whole crowd of
Greek anthropomorphic gods, exist only in the
human imagination.

Aristotle's successors offer Uttle of interest to
our inquiry. Theophrastus was charged with
impiety, but the charge broke down completely.

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 87

His theological standpoint was certainly the same
as Aristotle's. Of Strato, the most independent of
the Peripatetics, we know that in his view of nature
he laid greater stress on the material causes than
Aristotle did, and so arrived at a different con-
ception of the supreme deity. Aristotle had severed
the deity from Nature and placed it outside the
latter as an incorporeal being whose chief deter-
mining factor was reason. In Strato's view the
deity was identical with Nature and, like the latter,
was without consciousness ; consciousness was only
found in organic nature. Consequently we cannot
suppose him to have believed in the divinity of the
heavenly bodies in Aristotle's sense, though no
direct statement on this subject has come down to
us. About his attitude towards popular belief we
hear nothing. A denial of the popular gods is not
necessarily implied in Strato's theory, but seems
reasonable in itself and is further rendered probable
by the fact that all writers seem to take it for granted
that Strato knew no god other than the whole of
Nature.

We designated Socratic philosophy, in its rela-
tion to popular belief, as a reaction against the
radical free-thought of the sophistic movement.
It may seem peculiar that with Aristotle it develops
into a view which we can only describe as atheism.
There is, however, an important difference between
the standpoints of the sophists and of Aristotle.
Radical as the latter is at bottom, it is not, however,
openly opposed to popular belief — on the contrary,
to any one who did not examine it more closely it
must have had the appearance of accepting popular

88 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

belief. The very assumption that the heavenly
bodies were divine would contribute to that effect ;
this, as we have seen, was a point on which the
popular view laid great stress. If we add to this
that Aristotle never made the existence of the
popular gods matter of debate ; that he expressly
acknowledged the established worship ; and that
he consistently made use of certain fundamental
notions of popular belief in his philosophy — we can
hardly avoid the conclusion that, notwithstanding
his personal emancipation from the existing re-
ligion, he is a true representative of the Socratic
reaction against sophistic. But we see, too, that
there is a reservation in this reaction. In con-
tinuity with earlier Greek thought on religion, it
proceeded from the absolute definitions of the divine
offered by popular belief, but when criticising anthro-
pomorphism on this basis it did not after all avoid
falling out with popular belief. How far each philo-
sopher went in his antagonism was a matter of
discretion, as also was the means chosen to recon-
cile the philosophical with the popular view. The
theology of the Socratic schools thus suffered from a
certain half-heartedness ; in the main it has the
character of a compromise. It would not give up
the popular notions of the gods, and yet they were
continually getting in the way. This dualism
governs the whole of the succeeding Greek philo-
sophy.

CHAPTER VI

DURING the three or four centuries which
passed between the downfall of free Hellas
and the beginning of the Roman Empire,
great social and political changes took place in the
ancient world, involving also vital changes in re-
ligion. The chief phenomenon in this field, the
invasion of foreign, especially oriental, religions
into Hellas, does not come within the scope of this
investigation. On the one hand, it is an expression
of dissatisfaction with the old gods ; on the other,
the intrusion of new gods would contribute to the
ousting of the old ones. There is no question of
atheism here ; it is only a change within poly-
theism. But apart from this change there is evi-
dence that the old faith had lost its hold on men's
minds to no inconsiderable extent. Here, too,
there is hardly any question of atheism properly
speaking, but as a background to the — not very
numerous — evidences of such atheism in our
period, we cannot well ignore the decline of the
popular faith. Our investigation is rendered diffi-
cult on this point, and generally within this period,
by the lack of direct evidence. Of the rich Hellen-
istic literature almost everything has been lost, and
we are restricted to reports and fragments.

In order to gain a concrete starting-point we

90 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

will begin with a quotation from the historian
Polybius — so to speak the only Greek prose author
of the earlier Hellenistic period of whose works
considerable and connected portions are preserved.
Polybius wrote in the latter half of the second cen-
tury a history of the world in which Rome took the
dominant place. Here he gave, among other things,
a detailed description of the Roman constitution
and thus came to touch upon the state of religion in
Rome as compared with that in Greece. He says
on this subject :

" The greatest advantage of the Roman consti-
tution seems to me to lie in its conception of the
gods, and I believe that what among other peoples is
despised is what holds together the Roman power
— I mean superstition. For this feature has by
them been developed so far in the direction of
the ' horrible,' and has so permeated both private
and public life, that it is quite unique. Many
will perhaps find this strange, but I think they
have acted so with an eye to the mass of the people.
For if it were possible to compose a state of reason-
able people such a procedure would no doubt be
unnecessary, but as every people regarded as a mass
is easily impressed and full of criminal instincts,
unreasonable violence, and fierce passion, there is
nothing to be done but to keep the masses under by
vague fears and such-like hocus-pocus. Therefore
it is my opinion that it was not without good
reason or by mere chance that the ancients im-
parted to the masses the notions of the gods and the
underworld, but rather is it thoughtless and irra-
tional when nowadays we seek to destroy them."

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 91

As a proof of this last statement follows a com-
parison between the state of public morals in Greece
and in Rome. In Greece you cannot trust a man
with a few hundred pounds without ten notaries and
as many seals and double the number of witnesses ;
in Rome great public treasure is administered with
honesty merely under the safeguard of an oath.

As we see, this passage contains direct evidence
that in the second century in Hellas — in contra-
distinction to Rome — there was an attempt to break
down the belief in the gods. By his " we " Polybius
evidently referred especially to the leading political
circles. He knew these circles from personal ex-
perience, and his testimony has all the more weight
because he does not come forward in the role of the
orthodox man complaining in the usual way of the
impiety of his contemporaries ; on the contrary, he
speaks as the educated and enlightened man to
whom it is a matter of course that all this talk about
the gods and the underworld is a myth which
nobody among the better classes takes seriously.
This is a tone we have not heard before, and it is a
strong indirect testimony to the fact that Polybius
is not wrong when he speaks of disbelief among the
upper classes of Greece.

In this connexion the work of Polybius has a
certain interest on another point. Where earlier
— and later — authors would speak of the inter-
vention of the gods in the march of history, he
operates as a rule with an idea which he calls
Tyche. The word is untranslatable when used in
this way. It is something between chance, fortune
and fate. It is more comprehensive and more

92 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

personal than chance ; it has not the immutable,
the " lawbound " character of fate ; rather it
denotes the incalculability, the capriciousness asso-
ciated, especially in earlier usage, with the word
fortune, but without the tendency of this word to
be used in a good sense.

This Tyche-religion — if we may use this ex-
pression— was not new in Hellas. Quite early we
find Tyche worshipped as a goddess among the
other deities, and it is an old notion that the gods
send good fortune, a notion which set its mark on a
series of established phrases in private and public
life. But what is of interest here is that shifting
of religious ideas in the course of which Tyche
drives the gods into the background. We find
indications of it as early as Thucydides. In his view
of history he lays the main stress, certainly, on
human initiative, and not least on rational calcula-^
tion, as the cause of events. But where he is
obliged to reckon with an element independent of
human efforts, he calls it Tyche and not " the
immortal gods." A somewhat similar view we find
in another great political author of the stage of
transition to our period, namely, Demosthenes.
Demosthenes of course employs the official ap-
paratus of gods : he invokes them on solemn
occasions ; he quotes their authority in support of
his assertions (once he even reported a revelation
which he had in a dream) ; he calls his opponents
enemies of the gods, etc. But in his political con-
siderations the gods play a negligible part. The
factors with which he reckons as a rule are merely
political forces. Where he is compelled to bring

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 93

forward elements which man cannot control, he
shows a preference for Tyche. He certainly occa-
sionally identifies her with the favour of the gods,
but in such a way as to give the impression that it is
only a fagon de parley. Direct pronouncements of
a free-thinking kind one would not expect from an
orator and statesman, and yet Demosthenes was
once bold enough to say that Pythia, the mouth-
piece of the Delphic Oracle, was a partisan of
Macedonia, an utterance which his opponent
Aeschines, who liked to parade his orthodoxy,
did not omit to cast in his teeth. On the whole,
Aeschines liked to represent Demosthenes as a
godless fellow, and it is not perhaps without signifi-
cance that the latter never directly replied to such
attacks, or indirectly did anything to impair their
force.

During the violent revolutions that took place
in Hellas under Alexander the Great and his suc-
cessors, and the instability of social and political
conditions consequent thereon, the Tyche-religion
received a fresh impetus. With one stroke Hellas
was flung into world politics. Everything grew
to colossal proportions in comparison with earlier
conditions. The small Hellenic city-states that
had hitherto been each for itself a world shrank into
nothing. It is as if the old gods could not keep
pace with this violent process of expansion. Men
felt a craving for a wider and more comprehensive
religious concept to answer to the changed conditions,
and such an idea was found in the idea of Tyche.
Thoughtful men, such as Demetrius of Phalerum,
wrote whole books about it ; states built temples to

94 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

Tyche ; in private religion also it played a great
part. No one reflected much on the relation of
Tyche to the old gods. It must be remembered
that Tyche is a real layman's notion, and that
Hellenistic philosophy regarded it as its task pre-
cisely to render man independent of the whims
of fate. Sometimes, however, we find a positive
statement of the view that Tyche ruled over the
gods also. It is characteristic of the state of
affairs ; men did not want to relinquish the old
gods, but could not any longer allow them the
leading place.

If we return for a moment to Polybius, we shall
find that his conception of Tyche strikingly illus-
trates the distance between him and Thucydides.
In the introduction to his work, on its first page,
he points out that the universally acknowledged
task of historical writing is partly to educate people
for political activities, partly to teach them to bear
the vicissitudes of fortune with fortitude by re-
minding them of the lot of others. And subse-
quently, when he passes on to his main theme, the
foundation of the Roman world-empire, after having
explained the plan of his work, he says : "So far
then our plan. But the co-operation of fortune is
still needed if my life is to be long enough for me to
accomplish my purpose." An earlier — or a later —
author would here either have left the higher powers
out of the game altogether or would have used an
expression showing more submission to the gods of
the popular faith.

In a later author, Pliny the Elder, we again find
a characteristic utterance throwing light upon the

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 95

significance of the Tyche-religion. After a very free-
thinking survey of the popular notions regarding
the gods, Phny says : " As an intermediate position
between these two views (that there is a divine
providence and that there is none) men have them-
selves invented another divine power, in order that
speculation about the deity might become still more
uncertain. Throughout the world, in every place,
at every hour of the day. Fortune alone is invoked
and named by every mouth ; she alone is accused,
she bears the guilt of everything ; of her only do we
think, to her is all praise, to her all blame. And
she is worshipped with railing words — she is deemed
inconstant, by many even blind ; she is fickle, un-
stable, uncertain, changeable ; giving her favours
to the unworthy. To her is imputed every loss,
every gain ; in all the accounts of life she alone fills
up both the debit and the credit side, and we are so
subject to chance that Chance itself becomes our
god, and again proves the incertitude of the deity."
Even if a great deal of this may be put down to
rhetoric, by which Pliny was easily carried away,
the solid fact itself remains that he felt justified in
speaking as if Dame Fortune had dethroned all the
old gods.

That this view of life must have persisted very
tenaciously even down to a time when a strong
reaction in the direction of positive religious feeling
had set in, is proved by the romances of the time.
The novels of the ancients were in general poor
productions. Most of them are made after the
recipe of a little misfortune in each chapter and
great happiness in the last. The two lovers meet,

96 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

fall in love, part, and suffer a series of troubles
individually until they are finally united. The
power that governs their fates and shapes every-
thing according to this pattern is regularly Tyche,
never the gods. The testimony of the novels is of
special significance because they were read by the
general mass of the educated classes, not by the
select who had philosophy to guide them.

Another testimony to the weakening of popular
faith in the Hellenistic age is the decay of the
institution of the Oracle. This, also, is of early
date ; as early as the fifth and fourth century we
hear much less of the interference of the oracles in
political matters than in earlier times. The most
important of them all, the Delphic Oracle, was dealt
a terrible blow in the Holy War (356-346 B.C.), when
the Phocians seized it and used the treasures which
had been accumulated in it during centuries to hire
mercenaries and carry on war. Such proceedings
would assuredly have been impossible a century
earher ; no soldiers could have been hired with
money acquired in such a way, or, if they could
have been procured, all Hellas would have risen in
arms against the robbers of the Temple, whereas
in the Holy War most of the states were indifferent,
and several even sided with the Phocians. In the
succeeding years, after Philip of Macedonia had
put an end to the Phocian scandal, the Oracle was
in reality in his hands — it was during this period that
Demosthenes stigmatised it as the mouthpiece of
Philip. In the succeeding centuries, too, it was
dependent on the various rulers of Hellas and un-
doubtedly lost all public authority. During this

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 97

period we hear very little of the oracles of Hellas
until the time before and after the birth of Christ
provides us with definite evidence of their com-
plete decay.

Thus Strabo, who wrote during the reign of
Augustus, says that the ancients attached more
importance to divination generally and oracles more
particularly, whereas people in his day were quite
indifferent to these things. He gives as the reason
that the Romans were content to use the Sibylline
books and their own system of divination. His
remark is made a propos of the Oracle in Libya,
which was formerly in great repute, but was almost
extinct in his time. He is undoubtedly correct as
to the fact, but the decline of the oracular system
cannot be explained by the indifference of the
Romans. Plutarch, in a monograph on the dis-
continuance of the oracles, furnishes us with more
detailed information. From this it appears that not
only the Oracle of Ammon but also the numerous
oracles of Boeotia had ceased to exist, with one
exception, while even for the Oracle at Delphi,
which had formerly employed three priestesses, a
single one amply sufficed. We also note the remark
that the questions submitted to the Oracle were
mostly unworthy or of no importance.

The want of consideration sometimes shown to
sacred places and things during the wars of the
Hellenistic period may no doubt also be regarded
as the result of a weakening of interest in the old
gods. We have detailed information on this point
from the war between Philip of Macedonia and the
AetoHans in 220-217 B.C. The Aetolians began by

98 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

destroying the temples at Dium and Dodona,
whereupon Philip retaliated by totally wrecking the
federal sanctuary of the Aetolians at Thermon. Of
Philip's admiral Dicaearchus we are told by Polybius
that wherever he landed he erected altars to " god-
lessness and lawlessness " and offered up sacrifice
on them. Judging by the way he was hated, his
practice must have answered to his theory.

One more phenomenon must be mentioned in
this context, though it falls outside the limits
within which we have hitherto moved, and though
its connexion with free-thought and religious en-
lightenment will no doubt, on closer examination,
prove disputable. This is the decay of the estab-
lished worship of the Roman State in the later years
of the Republic.

In the preceding pages there has been no occa-
sion to include conditions in Rome in our investiga-
tion, simply because nothing has come down to us
about atheism in the earlier days of Rome, and we
may presume that it did not exist. Of any religious
thought at Rome corresponding to that of the Greeks
we hear nothing, nor did the Romans produce any
philosophy. Whatever knowledge of philosophy
there was at Rome was simply borrowed from the
Greeks. The Greek influence was not seriously felt
until the second century B.C., even though as early
as about the middle of the third century the Romans,
through the performance of plays translated from
the Greek, made acquaintance with Greek dramatic
poetry and the religious thought contained therein.
Neither the latter, nor the heresies of the philo-
sophers, seem to have made any deep impression

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 99

upon them. Ennius, their most important poet of
the second century, was no doubt strongly influenced
by Greek free-thinking, but this was evidently an
isolated phenomenon. Also, by birth Ennius was
not a native of Rome but half a Greek. The
testimony of Polybius (from the close of the second
century) to Roman religious conservatism is emphatic
enough. Its causes are doubtless of a complex
nature, but as one of them the peculiar character of
the Roman religion itself stands out prominently.
However much it resembled Greek religion in
externals — a resemblance which was strengthened
by numerous loans both of religious rites and of
deities — it is decidedly distinct from it in being
restricted still more to cultus and, above all, in
being entirely devoid of mythology. The Roman
gods were powers about the rites of whose worship
the most accurate details were known or could be
ascertained if need were, but they had little per-
sonality, and about their personal relations people
knew little and cared less. This was, aesthetically,
a great defect. The Roman gods afforded no good
theme for poetry and art, and when they were to be
used as such they were invariably replaced by loans
from the Greeks. But, as in the face of Greek free-
thought and Greek criticism of religion, they had the
advantage that the vital point for attack was lack-
ing. All the objectionable tales of the exploits of
the gods and the associated ideas about their
nature which had prompted the Greek attack on the
popular faith simply did not exist in Roman religion.
On the other hand, its rites were in many points more
primitive than the Greek ones, but Greek philosophy

100 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

had been very reserved in its criticism of ritual.
We may thus no doubt take it for granted, though
we have no direct evidence to that effect, that even
Romans with a Greek education long regarded the
Greek criticism of religion as something foreign
which was none of their concern.

That a time came when all this was changed ;
that towards the end of the Republic great scepti-
cism concerning the established religion of Rome
was found among the upper classes, is beyond doubt,
and we shall subsequently find occasion to consider
this more closely. In this connexion another cir-
cumstance demands attention, one which, moreover,
has by some been associated with Greek influence
among the upper classes, namely, the decay of the
established worship of the Roman State during the
last years of the Republic. Of the actual facts
there can hardly be any doubt, though we know
very little about them. The decisive symptoms
are : that Augustus, after having taken over the
government, had to repair some eighty dilapidated
temples in Rome and reinstitute a series of religious
rites and priesthoods which had ceased to function.
Among them was one of the most important, that
of the priest of Jupiter, an office which had been
vacant for more than seventy-five years (87-11 B.C.),
because it excluded the holder from a political career.
Further, that complaints were made of private
persons encroaching on places that were reserved
for religious worship ; and that Varro, when writing
his great work on the Roman religion, in many cases
was unable to discover what god was the obj ect of an
existing cult ; and generally, according to his own

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 101

statement he wrote his work, among other things,
in order to save great portions of the old Roman re-
Hgion from falHng into utter obhvion on account of
the indifference of the Romans themselves. It is
obvious that such a state of affairs would have been
impossible in a community where the traditional
religion was a living power, not only formally ac-
knowledged by everybody, but felt to be a necessary
of life, the spiritual daily bread, as it were, of the
nation.

To hold, however, that the main cause of the
decay of the established religion of Rome was the
invasion of Greek culture, together with the fact
that the members of the Roman aristocracy, from
whom the priests were recruited and who superin-
tended the cult, had become indifferent to the tra-
ditional religion through this influence, this, I think,
is to go altogether astray. We may take it for
granted that the governing classes in Rome would
not have ventured to let the cult decay if there had
been any serious interest in it among the masses of
the population ; and it is equally certain that Greek
philosophy and religious criticism did not penetrate
to these masses. When they became indifferent to
the national religion, this was due to causes that had
nothing to do with free-thought. The old Roman
religion was adapted for a small, narrow and homo-
geneous community whose main constituent and
real core consisted of the farmers, large and small,
and minor artisans. In the last centuries of the
Republic the social development had occasioned the
complete decay of the Roman peasantry, and the

free artisans had fared little better. In the place
8

102 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

of the old Rome had arisen the capital of an empire,
inhabited by a population of a million and of ex-
traordinarily mixed composition. Not only did
this population comprise a number of immigrant
foreigners, but, in consequence of the pecuhar
Roman rule that every slave on being set free
attained citizenship, a large percentage of the
citizens must of necessity have been of foreign
origin. Only certain portions of the Roman religion,
more especially the cult of the great central deities
of the State religion, can have kept pace with these
changed conditions ; the remainder had in reality lost
all hold on Roman society as it had developed in
process of time, and was only kept alive by force of
habit. To this must be added the peculiar Roman
mixture of mobility and conservatism in religious
matters. The Roman superstition and uncertainty
in regard to the gods led on the one hand to a
continual setting up of new cults and new sanc-
tuaries, and on the other hand to a fear of letting
any of the old cults die out. In consequence thereof
a great deal of dead and worthless ritual material
must have accumulated in Rome in the course of
centuries, and was of course in the way during the
rapid development of the city in the last century
of the Republic. Things must gradually have come
to such a pass that a thorough reform, above all a
reduction, of the whole cult had become a necessity.
To introduce such a reform the republican govern-
ment was just as unsuited as it was to carry out all
the other tasks imposed by the development of the
empire and the capital at that time. On this
point, however, it must not be forgotten that the

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 103

governing class not only lacked ability, for political
reasons, to carry out serious reforms, but also the
wiU to do so, on account of religious indifference,
and so let things go altogether to the bad. The
consequence was anarchy, in this as in all other
spheres at that time ; but at the same time the
tendency towards the only sensible issue, a restric-
tion of the old Roman State-cult, is plainly evident.
The simultaneous strong infusion of foreign re-
ligions was unavoidable in the mixed population of
the capital. That these influences also affected
the lower classes of the citizens is at any rate a
proof that they were not indifferent to religion.

In its main outlines this is all the information
that I have been able to glean about the general
decline of the belief in the gods during the Hellen-
istic period. Judging from such information we
should expect to find strong tendencies to atheism
in the philosophy of the period. These anticipations
are, however, doomed to disappointment. The
ruling philosophical schools on the whole preserved
a friendly attitude towards the gods of the popular
faith and especially towards their worship, although
they only accepted the existing religion with strict
reservation.

Most characteristic but least consistent and
original was the attitude of the Stoic school. The
Stoics were pantheists. Their deity was a substance
which they designated as fire, but which, it must be
admitted, differed greatly from fire as an element.
It permeated the entire world. It had produced the
world out of itself, and it absorbed it again, and
this process was repeated to eternity. The divine

104 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

fire was also reason, and as such the cause of the
harmony of the world-order. What of conscious
reason was found in the world was part of the divine
reason.

Though in this scheme of things there was in the
abstract plenty of room for the gods of popular belief,
nevertheless the Stoics did not in reality acknow-
ledge them. In principle their standpoint was the
same as Aristotle's. They supposed the heavenly
bodies to be divine, but all the rest, namely, the
anthropomorphic gods, were nothing to them.

In their explanation of the origin of the gods they
went beyond Aristotle, but their doctrine was not
always the same on this point. The earlier Stoics
regarded mythology and all theology as human
inventions, but not arbitrary inventions. Myth-
ology, they thought, should be understood allegori-
cally ; it was the naive expression partly of a correct
conception of Nature, partly of ethical and meta-
physical truths. Strictly speaking, men had always
been Stoics, though in an imperfect way. This
point of view was elaborated in detail by the first
Stoics, who took their stand partly on the earlier
naturalism which had already broken the ground
in this direction, and partly on sophistic, so that
they even brought into vogue again the theory of
Prodicus, that the gods were a hypostasis of the
benefits of civilisation. Such a standpoint could
not of course be maintained without arbitrariness
and absurdities which exposed it to embarrassing
criticism. This seems to have been the reason why
the later Stoics, and expecially Poseidonius, took
another road. They adopted the doctrine of

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 105

Xenocrates with regard to demons and developed
it in fantastic forms. The earUer method was not,
however, given up, and at the time of Cicero we find
both views represented in the doctrine of the school.

Such is the appearance of the theory. In both
its forms it is evidently an attempt to meet popular
belief half-way from a standpoint which is really
beyond it. This tendency is seen even more plainly
in the practice of the Stoics. They recognised
public worship and insisted on its advantages ; in
their moral reflections they employed the gods as
ideals in the Socratic manner, regardless of the fact
that in their theory they did not really allow for
gods who were ideal men ; nay, they even went the
length of giving to their philosophical deity, the
" universal reason," the name of Zeus by preference,
though it had nothing but the name in common with
the Olympian ruler of gods and men. This pervading
ambiguity brought much well-deserved reproof on
the Stoics even in ancient times ; but, however un-
attractive it may seem to us, it is of significance as
a manifestation of the great hold popular belief
continued to have even on the minds of the upper
classes, for it was to these that the Stoics appealed.

Far more original and consistent is the Epi-
curean attitude towards the popular faith. Epi-
curus unreservedly acknowledged its foundation,
i.e. the existence of anthropomorphic beings of a
higher order than man. His gods had human
shape but they were eternal and blessed. In the
latter definition was included, according to the
ethical ideal of Epicurus, the idea that the gods were
free from every care, including taking an interest in

106 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

nature or in human affairs. They were entirely
outside the world, a fact to which Epicurus gave
expression by placing them in the empty spaces
between the infinite number of spherical worlds
which he assumed. There his gods lived in bliss
like ideal Epicureans. Lucretius, the only poet of
this school, extolled them in splendid verse whose
motif he borrowed from Homer's description of
Olympus. In this way Epicurus also managed to
uphold public worship itself. It could not, of
course, have any practical aim, but it was justified
as an expression of the respect man owed to beings
whose existence expressed the human ideal.

The reasons why Epicurus assumed this attitude
towards popular belief are simple enough. He
maintained that the evidence of sensual perception
was the basis of all knowledge, and he thought that
the senses (through dreams) gave evidence of the
existence of the gods. And in the popular ideas of
the bliss of the gods he found his ethical ideal
directly confirmed. As regards their eternity the
case was more difiicult. The basis of his system
was the theory that everything was made of atoms
and that only the atoms as such, not the bodies
composed of the atoms, were eternal. ' He conceived
the gods, too, as made of atoms, nevertheless he held
that they were eternal. Any rational explanation
of this postulate is not possible on Epicurus's
hypotheses, and the criticism of his theology was
^therefore especially directed against this point.

Epicurus was the Greek philosopher who most
consistently took the course of emphasising the
popular dogma of the perfection of the gods in order

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 107

to preser\^e the popular notions about them. And
he was the philosopher to whom this would seem
the most obvious course, because his ethical ideal —
quietism — agreed with the oldest popular ideal of
divine existence. In this way Epicureanism be-
came the most orthodox of all Greek philosophical
schools. ''If nevertheless Epicurus did not escape
the charge of atheism the sole reason is that his
whole theology was denounced off-hand as hypo-
crisy. It was assumed to be set up by him only to
shield himself against a charge of impiety, not to
be his actual belief. This accusation is now uui-
versally acknowledged to be unjustified, and the
Epicureans had no difficulty in rebutting it with
interest. They took special delight in pointing out
that the theology of the other schools was much
more remote from popular belief than theirs, nay, in
spite of recognition of the existing religion, was in
truth fundamentally at variance with it. But in
reality their own was in no better case : gods who
did not trouble in the least about human affairs were
beings for whom popular belief had no use. It
made no difference that Epicurus's definition of the
nature of the gods was the direct outcome of a
fundamental doctrine of popular belief. Popular
religion will not tolerate pedantry.

In this connexion we cannot well pass over a third
philosophical school which played no inconspicuous
role in the latter half of our period, namely. Scepti-
cism. The Sceptic philosophy as such dates from
Socrates, from whom the so-called Megarian school
took its origin, but it did not reach its greatest
importance until the second century, when the

108 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

Academic school became Sceptic. It was especially
the famous philosopher Carneades, a brilliant
master of logic and dialectic, who made a success
by his searching negative criticism of the doctrines
of the other philosophical schools (the Dogmatics).
For such criticism the theology of the philosophers
was a grateful subject, and Carneades did not spare
it. Here as in all the investigations of the Sceptics \
the theoretical result was that no scientific certainty 1
could be attained : it was equally wrong to assert/^
or to deny the existence of the gods. But in practice
the attitude of the Sceptics was quite different.
Just as they behaved like other people, acting upon
their immediate impressions and experience, though
they did not believe that anything could be scientifi-
cally proved, e.g. not even the reality of the world
of the senses, so also did they acknowledge the
existing cult and lived generally like good heathens.
Characteristic though Scepticism be of a period of
Greek spiritual life in which Greek thought lost its
belief in itself, it was, however, very far from sup-
porting atheism. On the contrary, according to the \
correct Sceptic doctrine atheism was a dogmatic '
contention which theoretically was as objectionable
as its antithesis, and in practice was to be utterly ,
discountenanced.

A more radical standpoint than this as regards
the gods of the popular faith is not found during
the Hellenistic period except among the less noted
schools, and in the beginning of the period. We
have already mentioned such thinkers as Strato,
Theodorus, and Stilpo ; chronologically they be-
long to the Hellenistic Age, but in virtue of their

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 109

connexion with the Socratic philosophy they were
dealt with in the last chapter. A definite polemical
attitude towards the popular faith is also a charac-
teristic of the Cynic school, hence, though our infor-
mation is very meagre, we must speak of it a little
more fully.

The Cynics continued the tendency of Anti-
sthenes, but the school comparatively soon lost its
importance. After the third century we hear no
more about the Cynics until they crop up again about
the year a.d. igo. But in the fourth and third
centuries the school had important representatives.
The most famous is Diogenes ; his life, to be sure,
is entangled in such a web of legend that it is diffi-
cult to arrive at a true picture of his personality.
Of his attitude towards popular belief we know one
thing, that he did not take part in the worship of
the gods. This was a general principle of the
Cynics ; their argument was that the gods were " in
need of nothing " (cf. above, pp. 60 and 41). If we
find him accused of atheism, in an anecdote of very
doubtful value, it may, if there is anything in it,
be due to his rejection of worship. Of one of his
successors, however, Bion of Borysthenes, we have
authentic information that he denied the existence
of the gods, with the edifying legend attached that
he was converted before his death. But we also
hear of Bion that he was a disciple of the atheist
Theodorus, and other facts go to suggest that Bion
united Cynic and Hedonistic principles in his mode
of life — a compromise that was not so unlikely as
might be supposed. Bion's attitude cannot there-
fore be taken as typical of Cynicism. Another

110 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

Cynic of about the same period (the beginning of the
third century) was Menippus of Gadara (in northern
Palestine). He wrote tales and dialogues in a
mixture of prose and verse. The contents were
satirical, the satire being directed against the con-
temporary philosophers and their doctrines, and
against the popular notions of the gods. Menippus
availed himself partly of the old criticism of
mythology and partly of the philosophical attacks
on the popular conception of the gods. The only
novelty was the facetious form in which he con-
cealed the sting of serious criticism. It is impos-
sible to decide whether he positively denied the
existence of the gods, but his satire on the popular
notions and its success among his contemporaries at
least testifies to the weakening of the popular faith
among the educated classes. In Hellas itself he seems
to have gone out of fashion very early ; but the
Romans took him up again ; Varro and Seneca
imitated him, and Lucian made his name famous
again in the Greek world in the second century after
Christ. It is chiefly due to Lucian that we can form
an idea of Menippus' s literary work, hence we shall
return to Cynic satire in our chapter on the age of
the Roman Empire.

During our survey of Greek philosophical thought
in the Hellenistic period we have only met with a
few cases of atheism in the strict sense, and they all
occur about and immediately after 300, though
there does not seem to be any internal connexion
between them. About the same time there ap-
peared a writer, outside the circle of philosophers,
who is regularly listed among the atheoi, and who

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 111

has given a name to a peculiar theory about the
origin of the idea of the gods, namely, Euhcmerus.
He is said to have travelled extensively in the
service of King Cassander of Macedonia. At any
rate he published his theological views in the shape
of a book of travel which was, however, wholly
fiction. He relates how he came to an island,
Panchaia, in the Indian Ocean, and in a temple
there found a lengthy inscription in which Uranos,
Kronos, Zeus and other gods recorded their exploits.
The substance of the tale was that these gods had
once been men, great kings and rulers, who had
bestowed on their peoples all sorts of improvements
in civilisation and had thus got themselves wor-
shipped as gods. It appears from the accounts
that Euhemerus supposed the heavenly bodies to be
real and eternal gods — he thought that Uranos had
first taught men to worship them ; further, as his
theory is generally understood, it must be assumed
that in his opinion the other gods had ceased to
exist as such after their death. This accords with
the fact that Euhemerus was generally characterised
as an atheist.

The theory that the gods were at first men was
not originated by Euhemerus, though it takes its
name (Euhemerism) from him. The theory had
some support in the popular faith which recognised
gods (Heracles, Asclepius) who had lived as men on
earth ; and the opinion which was fundamental to
Greek religion, that the gods had come into exist-
ence, and had not existed from eternity, would
favour this theory. Moreover, Euhemerus had had
an immediate precursor in the slightly earlier

112 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

Hecataeus of Abdera, who had set forth a similar
theory, with the difference, however, that he took
the view that all excellent men became real gods.
But Euhemerus's theory appeared just at the
right moment and fell on fertile soil. Alexander
the Great and his successors had adopted the Oriental -
policy by which the ruler was worshipped as a god,
and were supported in this by a tendency which
had already made itself felt occasionally among
the Greeks in the East. Euhemerus only inverted
matters — if the rulers were gods, it was an obvious
inference that the gods were rulers. No wonder that
his theory gained a large following. Its great in-
fluence is seen from numerous similar attempts in
the Hellenistic world. At Rome, in the second
century, Ennius translated his works into Latin,
and as late as the time of Augustus an author such
as Diodorus, in his popular history of the world,
served up Euhemerism as the best scientific ex- 1
planation of the origin of religion. It is character-
istic, too, that both Jews and Christians, in their
attacks on Paganism, reckoned with Euhemerism
as a well-established theory. As every one knows,
it has survived to our day ; Carlyle, I suppose,
being its last prominent exponent.

It is characteristic of Euhemerism in its most
radical form that it assumed that the gods of poly-
theism did not exist ; so far it is atheism. But it
is no less characteristic that it made the con-
cession to popular belief that its gods had once
existed. Hereby it takes its place, in spite of its
greater radicalism, on the same plane with most
other ancient theories about the origin of men's

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 113

notions about the gods.\-^he gods of popular belief
could not survive in the light of ancient thought,
which in its essence was free-thought, not tied
down by dogmas. But the philosophers of old could
"hot but believe that a psychological fact of such
enormous dimensions as ancient polytheism must
have something answering to it in the objective
world. Ancient philosophy never got clear of this \f
dilemma ; hence Plato's open recognition of the
absurdity ; hence Aristotle's delight at being able
to meet the popular faith half-way in his assumption
of the divinity of the heavenly bodies ; hence Xeno-
crates's demons, the allegories of the Stoics, the
ideal Epicureans of Epicurus, Euhemerus's early
benefactors of mankind. And we may say that the
more the Greeks got to know of the w^orld about them
the more they were confirmed in their view, for in
the varied multiplicity of polytheism they found the
same principle everywhere, the same belief in a
\v multitude of beings of a higher order than man. \

Euhemerus's theory is no doubt the last serious \
attempt in the old pagan world to give an explana- j
tion of the popular faith which may be called '
genuine atheism. We will not, however, leave the }
Hellenistic period without casting a glance at some
personalities about whom we have information
enough to form an idea at first hand of their re-
ligious standpoint, and whose attitude towards
popular belief at any rate comes very near to
atheism pure and simple.

One of them is Polybius. In the above-cited
passage referring to the decline of the popular faith
in the Hellenistic period, Polybius also gives his own

\

114 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

theory of the origin of men's notions regarding the
gods. It is not new. It is the theory known from
the Critias fragment, what may be called the poli-
tical theory. In the fragment it appears as atheism
pure and simple, and it seems obvious to understand
it in the same way in Polybius. That he shows a
leaning towards Euhemerism in another passage
where he speaks about the origin of religious ideas, is
in itself not against this — the two theories are closely
related and might very well be combined. But we
have a series of passages in which Polybius expressed
himself in a way that seems quite irreconcilable with
a purely atheistic standpoint. He expressly ac-
knowledged divination and worship as justified ; in
several places he refers to disasters that have
befallen individuals or a whole people as being sent
by the gods, or even as a punishment for impiety ;
and towards the close of his work he actually, in
marked contrast to the tone of its beginning, offers
up a prayer to the gods to grant him a happy ending
to his long life. It would seem as if Polybius at a
certain period of his life came under the influence of
Stoicism and in consequence greatly modified his
earlier views. That these were of an atheistic
character seems, however, beyond doubt, and that
is the decisive point in this connexion.

Cicero's philosophical standpoint was that of an
Academic, i.e. a Sceptic. But — in accord, for the
rest, with the doctrines of the school just at this
period — he employed his liberty as a Sceptic to
favour such philosophical doctrines as seemed to
him more reasonable than others, regardless of the
school from which they were derived. In his

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 115

philosophy of rehgion he was more especially a Stoic.
He himself expressly insisted on this point of view
in the closing words of his work on the Nature of
the Gods. As he was not, and made no pretence
of being, a philosopher, his philosophical expositions
have no importance for us ; they are throughout
second-hand, mostly mere translations from Greek
sources. That we have employed them in the fore-
going pages to throw light on the theology of the
earlier, more especially the Hellenistic, philosophy,
goes without saying. But his personal religious
standpoint is not without interest.

As orator and statesman Cicero took his stand
wholly on the side of the established Roman rehgion,
operating with the " immortal gods," with Jupiter
Optimus Maximus, etc., at his convenience. In his
works on the State and the Laws he adheres decidedly
to the established religion. But all this is mere
politics. Personally Cicero had no religion other
than philosophy. Philosophy was his consolation
in adversity, or he attempted to make it so, for
the result was often indifferent ; and he looked to
philosophy to guide him in ethical questions. We
never find any indication in his writings that the
gods of popular belief meant anything to him in these
respects. And what is more — he assumed this off-
hand to be the standpoint of everybody else, and
evidently he was justified. A great number of
letters from him to his circle, and not a few from his
friends and acquaintances to him, have been pre-
served ; and in his philosophical writings he often
introduces contemporary Romans as characters in
the dialogue. But in all this literature there is

116 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

never the faintest indication that a Roman of the
better class entertained, or could even be supposed
to entertain, an orthodox view with regard to the
State religion. To Cicero and his circle the popular
faith did not exist as an element of their personal
religion.

Such a standpoint is of course, practically speak-
ing, atheism, and in this sense atheism was widely
spread among the higher classes of the Graeco-
Roman society about the time of the birth of Christ.
But from this to theoretical atheism there is still
a good step. Cicero himself affords an amusing
example of how easily people, who have apparently
quite emancipated themselves from the official re-
ligion of their community, may backslide. When
his beloved daughter Tullia died in the year 45 B.C., it
became evident that Cicero, in the first violence of
his grief, which was the more overwhelming because
he was excluded from political activity during
Cæsar's dictatorship, could not console himself with
philosophy alone. He wanted something more
tangible to take hold on, and so he hit upon the idea
of having Tullia exalted among the gods. He
thought of building a temple and instituting a cult
in her honour. He moved heaven and earth to
arrange the matter, sought to buy ground in a
prominent place in Rome, and was willing to make
the greatest pecuniary sacrifices to get a conspicuous
result. Nothing came of it all, however ; Cicero's
friends, who were to help him to put the matter
through, were perhaps hardly so eager as he ; time
assuaged his own grief, and finally he contented
himself with publishing a consolatory epistle written

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 117

by himself, or, correctly speaking, translated from a
famous Greek work and adapted to the occasion.
So far he ended where he should, i.e. in philosophy ;
but the little incident is significant, not least
because it shows what practical ends Euhemerism
could be brought to serve and how doubtful was
its atheistic character after all. For not only was
the contemplated apotheosis of Tullia in itself a
Euhemeristic idea, but Cicero also expressly de-
fended it with Euhemeristic arguments, though
speaking as if the departed who were worshipped as
gods really had become gods.

The attitude of Cicero and his contemporaries
towards popular belief was still the general attitude
in the first days of the Empire. It was of no avail
that Augustus re-established the decayed State cult
in all its splendour and variety, or that the poets
during his reign, when they wished to express them-
selves in harmony with the spirit of the new regime,
directly or indirectly extolled the revived orthodoxy.
Wherever we find personal religious feeling expressed
by men of that time, in the Epistles of Horace, in
Virgil's posthumous minor poems or in such pas-
sages in his greater works where he expresses his own
ideals, it is philosophy that is predominant and the
official religion ignored. Virgil was an Epicurean ;
Horace an Eclectic, now an Epicurean, then a Stoic ;
Augustus had a domestic philosopher. Ovid em-
ployed his genius in writing travesties of the old
mythology while at the same time he composed a
poem, serious for him, on the Roman cult ; and when
disaster befell him and he was cast out from the
society of the capital, which was the breath of life
9

118 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

to him, he was abandoned not only by men, but also
by the gods — he had not even a philosophy with
which to console himself. It is only in inferior
writers such as Valerius Maximus, who wrote a work
on great deeds — good and evil — under Tiberius, that
we find a different spirit.

Direct utterances about men's relationship to
the gods, from which conclusions can be drawn, are
seldom met with during this period. The whole
question was so remote from the thoughts of these
people that they never mentioned it except when
they assumed an orthodox air for political or
aesthetic reasons. Still, here and there we come
across something. One of the most significant
pronouncements is that of Pliny the Elder, from
whom we quoted the passage about the worship of
Fortune. Pliny opens his scientific encyclopedia
by explaining the structure of the universe in its
broad features ; this he does on the lines of the
physics of the Stoics, hence he designates the uni-
verse as God. Next comes a survey of special
theology. It is introduced as follows : "I therefore
deem it a sign of human weakness to ask about the
shape and form of God. Whoever God is, if any
other god (than the universe) exists at all, and in
whatever part of the world he is, he is all perception,
all sight, all hearing, all soul, all reason, all self."
The popular notions of the gods are then reviewed,
in the most supercilious tone, and their absurdities
pointed out. A polite bow is made to the worship
of the Emperors and its motives, the rest is little
but persiflage. Not even Providence, which was
recognised by the Stoics, is acknowledged by

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 119

Pliny. The conclusion is like the beginning : " To
imperfect human nature it is a special consola-
tion that God also is not omnipotent (he can
neither put himself to death, even if he would,
though he has given man that power and it is his
choicest gift in this punishment which is life ; nor
can he give immortality to mortals or call the dead
to life ; nor can he bring it to pass that those who
have lived have not lived, or that he who has held
honourable offices did not hold them) ; and that he
has no other power over the past than that of
oblivion ; and that (in order that we may also give
a jesting proof of our partnership with God) he
cannot bring it about that twice ten is not twenty,
and more of the same sort — by all which the power
of Nature is clearly revealed, and that it is this we
call God."

An opinion like that expressed here must without
doubt be designated as atheism, even though it is
nothing but the Stoic pantheism logically carried
out. As we have said before, we rarely meet it so
directly expressed, but there can hardly be any
doubt that even in the time of Pliny it was quite
common in Rome. At this point, then, had the
educated classes of the ancient world arrived under
the influence of Hellenistic philosophy. y

CHAPTER VII

THOUGH the foundation of the Empire in
many ways inaugurated a new era for the
antique world, it is, of course, impossible,
in an inquiry which is not confined to political
history in the narrowest sense of the word, to
operate with anything but the loosest chronological
divisions. Accordingly in the last chapter we had
to include phenomena from the early days of the
Empire in order not to separate things which
naturally belonged together. From the point of
view of religious history the dividing line cannot
possibly be drawn at the Emperor Augustus, in spite
of his restoration of worship and the orthodox
reaction in the official Augustan poetry, but rather
at about the beginning of the second century. The
enthusiasm of the Augustan Age for the good old
times was never much more than affectation. It
quickly evaporated when the promised millennium
was not forthcoming, and was replaced by a reserve
which developed into cynicism — but, be it under-
stood, in the upper circles of the capital only. In
the empire at large the development took its natural
tranquil course, unaffected by the manner in which
the old Roman nobility was effacing itself ; and this
development did not tend towards atheism.

The reaction towards positive religious feeling,

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 121

which becomes clearly manifest in the second cen-
tury after Christ, though the preparation for it is
undoubtedly of earlier date, is perhaps the most
remarkable phenomenon in the religious history of
antiquity. This is not the place to inquire into
its causes, which still remain largely unexplained ;
there is even no reason to enter more closely into its
outer manifestations, as the thing itself is doubted
by nobody. It is sufficient to mention as instances
authors like Suetonius, with his naive belief in
miracles, and the rhetorician Aristides, with his
Asclepius-cult and general sanctimoniousness ; or
a minor figure such as Aelian, who wrote whole
books of a pronounced, nay even fanatical, devotion-
alism ; or within the sphere of philosophy move-
ments like Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism,
both of which are as much in the nature of mystic
theology as attempts at a scientific explanation
of the universe. It is characteristic, too, that an
essentially anti-religious school like that of the
Epicureans actually dies out at this time. Under
these conditions our task in this chapter must be to
bring out the comparatively few and weak traces of
other currents which still made themselves felt.

Of the earlier philosophical schools Stoicism
flowered afresh in the second century ; the Em-
peror Marcus Aurelius himself was a prominent
adherent of the creed. This later Stoicism differs,
however, somewhat from the earlier. It limits the
scientific apparatus which the early Stoics had
operated with to a minimum, and is almost ex-
clusively concerned with practical ethics on a
religious basis. Its religion is that of ordinary

122 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

Stoicism : Pantheism and belief in Providence.
But, on the whole, it takes up a more sympa-
thetic attitude towards popular religion than early
Stoicism had done. Of the bitter criticism of the
absurdities of the worship of the gods and of
mythology which is still to be met with as late as
Seneca, nothing remains. On the contrary, partici-
pation in public worship is still enjoined as being a
duty ; nay, more : attacks on belief in the gods — in
the plain popular sense of the word — are denounced
as pernicious and reprehensible. Perhaps no clearer
proof could be adduced of the revolution which
had taken place in the attitude of the educated
classes towards popular religion than this change
of front on the part of Stoicism.

Contrary to this was the attitude of another
school which was in vogue at the same time as
the Stoic, namely, the Cynic. Between Cynicism
and popular belief strained relations had existed
since early times. It is true, the Cynics did not
altogether deny the existence of the gods ; but they
rejected worship on the ground that the gods were
not in need of anything, and they denied categori-
cally the majority of the popular ideas about the
gods. For the latter were, in fact, popular and
traditional, and the whole aim of the Cynics was
to antagonise the current estimate of values. A
characteristic instance of their manner is provided
by this very period in the fragments of the work of
Oenomaus. The work was entitled The Swindlers
Unmasked, and it contained a violent attack on
oracles. Its tone is exceedingly pungent. In the
extant fragments Oenomaus addresses the god in

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 123

Delphi and overwhelms him with insults. But we
are expressly told — and one utterance of Ocnomaus
himself verifies it — that the attack was not really
directed against the god, but against the men who
gave oracles in his name. In his opinion the whole
thing was a priestly fraud — a view which otherwise
was rather unfamiliar to the ancients, but played
an important part later. Incidentally there is a
violent attack on idolatry. The work is not without
acuteness of thought and a certain coarse wit of the
true Cynical kind ; but it is entirely uncritical
(oracles are used which are evidently inventions of
later times) and of no great significance. It is even
difficult to avoid the impression that the author's
aim is in some degree to create a sensation. Cynics
of that day were not strangers to that kind of thing.
But it is at any rate a proof of the fact that there
were at the time tendencies opposed to the religious
reaction.

A more significant phenomenon of the same kind
is to be found in the writings of Lucian. Lucian was
by education a rhetorician, by profession an itinerant
lecturer and essayist. At a certain stage of his life
he became acquainted with the Cynic philosophy
and for some time felt much attracted to it. From
that he evidently acquired a sincere contempt of
the vulgar superstition which flourished in his
time, even in circles of which one might have
expected something better. In writings which for
the greater part belong to his later period, he
pilloried individuals who traded (or seemed to trade)
in the rehgious ferment of the time, as well as
satirised superstition as such. In this way he

124 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

made an important contribution to the spiritual
history of the age. But simultaneously he pro-
duced, for the entertainment of his public, a series of
writings the aim of which is to make fun of the
Olympian gods. In this work also he leant on the
literature of the Cynics, but substituted for their
grave and biting satire light causeries or slight
dramatic sketches, in which his wit — for Lucian
was really witty — had full scope. As an instance
of his manner I shall quote a short passage from the
dialogue Timon. It is Zeus who speaks ; he has
given Hermes orders to send the god of wealth to
Timon, who has wasted his fortune by his liberality
and is now abandoned by his false friends. Then
he goes on : " As to the flatterers you speak of and
their ingratitude, I shall deal with them another
time, and they will meet with their due punishment
as soon as I have had my thunderbolt repaired.
The two largest darts of it were broken and blunted
the other day when I got in a rage and flung it at the
sophist Anaxagoras, who was trying to make his
disciples believe that we gods do not exist at all.
However, I missed him, for Pericles held his hand
over him, but the bolt struck the temple of the
Dioscuri and set fire to it, and the bolt itself was
nearly destroyed when it struck the rock." This
sort of thing abounds in Lucian, even if it is not
always equally amusing and to the point. Now
there is nothing strange in the fact that a witty man
for once should feel inclined to make game of the old
mythology ; this might have happened almost at
any time, once the critical spirit had been awakened.
But that a man, and moreover an essayist, who had

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 125

to live by the approval of his public, should
make it his trade, as it were, and that at a time
of vigorous religious reaction, seems more difficult
to account for. Lucian's controversial pamphlets
against superstition cannot be classed off-hand with
his Dialogues of the Gods ; the latter are of a quite
different and far more harmless character. The fact
is rather that mythology at this time was fair game.
It was cut off from its connexion with religion — a
connexion which in historical times was never very
intimate and was now entirely severed. This had
been brought about in part by centuries of criticism
of the most varied kind, in part precisely as a result
of the religious reaction which had now set in. If
people turned during this time to the old gods — who,
however, had been considerably contaminated with
new elements — it was because they had nothing
else to turn to ; but what they now looked for was
something quite different from the old religion.
The powerful tradition which had bound members
of each small community — we should say, of each
township — to its familiar gods, with all that belonged
to them, was now in process of dissolution ; in the
larger cities of the world-empire with their mixed
populations it had entirely disappeared. Religion
was no longer primarily a concern of society ; it was
a personal matter. In the face of the enormous
selection of gods which ancient paganism came
gradually to proffer, the individual was free to
choose, as individual or as a member of a com-
munion based upon religious, not political, sympathy.
Under these circumstances the existence of the gods
and their power and will to help their worshippers

126 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

was the only thing of interest ; all the old tales about
them were more than ever myths of no religious
value. On closer inspection Lucian indeed proves
to have exercised a certain selection in his satire.
Gods like Asclepius and Serapis, who were popular
in his day, he prefers to say nothing about ; and
even with a phenomenon like Christianity he deals
cautiously ; he sticks to the old Olympian gods. Thus
his derision of these constitutes an indirect proof
that they had gone out of vogue, and his forbear-
ance on other points is a proof of the power of the
current religion over contemporary minds. As to
ascribing any deeper religious conviction to Lucian —
were it even of a purely negative kind — that is, in view
of the whole character of his work, out of the ques-
tion. To be sure, his polemical pamphlets against
superstition show clearly, like those of Oenomaus, that
the religious reaction did not run its course without
criticism from certain sides ; but even here it is sig-
nificant that the criticism comes from a professional
jester and not from a serious religious thinker.

A few words remain to be said about the two
monotheistic religions which in the days of the
Roman Empire came to play a great, one of them
indeed a decisive, part. I have already referred
to pagan society's attitude towards Judaism and
Christianity, and pointed out that the adherents of
both were designated and treated as atheists — the
Jews only occasionally and with certain reservations,
the Christians nearly always and unconditionally.
The question here is, how far this designation was
justified according to the definition of atheism which
is the basis of our inquiry.

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 127

In the preceding pages we have several times re-
ferred to the fact that the real enemy of Polytheism
is not the philosophical theology, which generally
tends more or less towards Pantheism, but Mono-
theism. It is in keeping with this that the Jews and
the Christians in practice are downright deniers of
the pagan gods : they would not worship them ;
whereas the Greek philosophers as a rule respected
worship, however far they went in their criticism of
men's ideas of the gods. We shall not dwell here on
this aspect of the matter ; we are concerned with
the theory only. Detailed expositions of it occur
in numerous writings, from the passages in the Old
Testament where heathenism is attacked, to the
defences of Christianity by the latest Fathers of the
Church.

The original Jewish view, according to which the
heathen gods are real beings just as much as the
God of the Jews themselves — only Jews must not
worship them — is in the later portions of the Old
Testament superseded by the view that the gods are
only images made of wood, stone or metal, and in-
capable of doing either good or evil. This point of
view is taken over by later Jewish authors and
completely dominates them. In those acquainted
with Greek thought it is combined with Euhemer-
istic ideas : the images represent dead men. The
theory that the gods are really natural objects —
elements or heavenly bodies — is occasionally taken
into account too. Alongside of these opinions there
appears also the view that the pagan gods are evil
spirits (demons). It is already found in a few places
in the Old Testament, and after that sporadically

128 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

and quite incidentally in later Jewish writings ; in
one place it is combined with the Old Testament's
account of the fallen angels. The demon-theory
is not an instrument of Jewish apologetics proper,
not even of Philo, though he has a complete demon-
ology and can hardly have been ignorant of the
Platonic-Stoic doctrine of demons.

Apart from the few and, as it were, incidental
utterances concerning demons, the Jewish view of /
the pagan gods impresses one as decidedly atheistic.
The god is identical with the idol, and the idol is a
dead object, the work of men's hands, or the god
is identical with a natural object, made by God to
be sure, but without soul or, at any rate, without
divinity. It is remarkable that no Jewish contro-
versialist seriously envisaged the problem of the
real view of the gods embodied in the popular belief
of the ancients, namely, that they are personal
beings of a higher order than man. It is inconceiv-
able that men like Philo, Josephus and the author of
the Wisdom of Solomon should have been ignorant
of it. I know nothing to account for this curious
phenomenon ; and till some light has been thrown
upon the matter, I should hesitate to assert thatx
the Jewish conception of Polytheism was purely
atheistic, however much appearance it may have
of being so.

It was otherwise with Christian polemical writ-
ing. As early as St. Paul the demon-theory appears
distinctly, though side by side with utterances of
seemingly atheistic character. Other New Testa-
ment authors, too, designate the gods as demons.
The subsequent apologists, excepting the earliest.

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 129

Aristides, lay the main stress on demonology, but
include for the sake of completeness idolatry and
the like, sometimes without caring about or trying
to conciliate the contradictions. In the long run
demonology is victorious ; in St. Augustine, the fore-
most among Christian apologists, there is hardly
any other point of view that counts.

To trace the Christian demonology in detail and
give an account of its various aspects is outside the
scope of this essay. Its origin is a twofold one,
partly the Jewish demonology, which just at the
commencement of our era had received a great
impetus, partly the theory of the Greek philosophers,
which we have characterised above when speaking
of Xenocrates. The Christian doctrine regarding
demons differs from the latter, especially by the fact
that it does not acknowledge good demons ; they
were all evil. This was the indispensable basis for
the interdict against the worship of demons ; in
its further development the Christians, following
Jewish tradition, pointed to an origin in the fallen
angels, and thus effected a connexion with the Old
Testament. While they at the same time retained
its angelology they had to distinguish good and
evil beings intermediate between god and man ;
but they carefully avoided designating the angels
as demons, and kept them distinct from the pagan
gods, who were all demons and evil.

The application of demonology to the pagan
worship caused certain difficulties in detail. To be
sure, it was possible to identify a given pagan god
with a certain demon, and this was often done ; but
it was impossible to identify the Pagans' conceptions

130 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

of their gods with the Christians' conceptions of
demons. The Pagans, in fact, ascribed to their
gods not only demoniac (diabohcal) but also divine
qualities, which the Christians absolutely denied
them. Consequently they had to recognise that
pagan worship to a great extent rested on a delusion,
on a misconception of the essential character of the
gods which were worshipped. This view was cor-
roborated by the dogma of the fallen angels, which
was altogether alien to paganism. By identifying
them with the evil spirits of the Bible, demon-
names were even obtained which differed from those
of the pagan gods and, of course, were the correct
ones ; were they not given in Holy Writ ? In
general, the Christians, who possessed an authentic
revelation of the matter, were of course much better
informed about the nature of the pagan gods than
the Pagans themselves, who were groping in the
dark. Euhemerism, which plays a great part in the
apologists, helped in the same direction : the sup-
position that the idols were originally men existed
among the Pagans themselves, and it was too much
in harmony with the tendency of the apologists to
be left unemployed. It was reconciled with demon-
ology by the supposition that the demons had
assumed the masks of dead heroes ; they had be-
guiled mankind to worship them in order to possess
themselves of the sacrifices, which they always
coveted, and by this deception to be able to rule and
corrupt men. The Christians also could not avoid
recognising that part of the pagan worship was
worship of natural objects, in particular of the
heavenly bodies ; and^this error of worshipping the

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 131

" creation instead of the creator " was so obvious
that the Christians were not inclined to resort to
demonology for an explanation of this phenomenon,
the less so as they could not identify the sun or the
moon with a demon. The conflict of these different
points of view accounts for the peculiar vacillation
in the Christian conception of paganism. On one
hand, we meet with crude conceptions, according to
which the pagan gods are just like so many demons ;
they are specially prominent when pagan miracles
and prophecies are to be explained. On the other
hand, there is a train of thought which carried to its
logical conclusion would lead to conceiving paganism
as a whole as a huge delusion of humanity, but a
delusion caused indeed by supernatural agencies.
This conclusion hardly presented itself to the early
Church ; later, however, it was drawn and caused
a not inconsiderable shifting in men's views and
explanations of paganism.

Demonology is to such a degree the ruling point
of view in Christian apologetics that it would be
absurd to make a collection from these writings of
utterances with an atheistic ring. Such utterances
are to be found in most of them ; they appear
spontaneously, for instance, wherever idolatry is
attacked. But one cannot attach any importance
to them when they appear in this connexion, not
even in apologists in whose works the demon theory
is lacking. No Christian theologian in antiquity
advanced, much less sustained, the view that the
pagan gods were mere phantoms of human imagina-
tion without any corresponding reality.

Remarkable as this state of things may appear

132 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

to us moderns, it is really quite simple, nay even a
matter of course, when regarded historically. Chris-
tianity had from its very beginning a decidedly
dualistic character. The contrast between this
world and the world to come was identical with
the contrast between the kingdom of the Devil
and the kingdom of God. As soon as the new re-
ligion came into contact with paganism, the latter
was necessarily regarded as belonging to the king-
dom of the Devil ; thus the conception of the gods as
demons was a foregone conclusion. In the minds of
the later apologists, who became acquainted with
Greek philosophy, this conception received addi-
tional confirmation ; did it not indeed agree in the
main with Platonic and Stoic theory ? Details were
added : the Christians could not deny the pagan
miracles without throwing a doubt on their own,
for miracles cannot be done away with at all except
by a denial on principle ; neither could they explain
paganism — that gigantic, millennial aberration of
humanity — by merely human causes, much less lay
the blame on God alone. But ultimately all this
rests on one and the same thing — the supernatural
and dualistic hypothesis. Consequently demon-
ology is the kernel of the Christian conception of
paganism : it is not merely a natural result of the
hypotheses, it is the one and only correct expression
of the way in which the new religion understood the
old.

CHAPTER VIII

IN the preceding inquiry we took as our starting-
point not the ancient conception of atheism
but the modern view of the nature of the
pagan gods. It proved that this view was, upon
the whole, feebly represented during antiquity, and
that it was another view (demonology) which was
transmitted to later ages from the closing years of
antiquity. The inquiry will therefore find its
natural conclusion in a demonstration of the time
and manner in which the conception handed down
from antiquity of the nature of paganism was super-
seded and displaced by the modern view.

This question is, however, more difhcult to
answer than one would perhaps think. After
ancient paganism had ceased to exist as a living
religion, it had lost its practical interest, and
theoretically the Middle Ages were occupied with
quite other problems than the nature of paganism.
At the revival of the study of ancient literature,
during the Renaissance, people certainly again
came into the most intimate contact with ancient
religion itself, but systematic investigations of its
nature do not seem to have been taken up in
real earnest until after the middle of the sixteenth
century. It is therefore difficult to ascertain in what
light paganism was regarded during the thousand

184 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

years which had then passed since its final extinction.
From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on
the other hand, the material is extraordinarily
plentiful, though but slightly investigated. Pre-
vious works in this field seem to be entirely wanting ;
at any rate it has not been possible for me to find
any collective treatment of the subject, nor even
any contributions worth mentioning towards the
solution of the numerous individual problems
which arise when we enter upon what might be
called " the history of the history of religion." ^ In
this essay I must therefore restrict myself to a few
aphoristic remarks which may perhaps give occasion
for this subject, in itself not devoid of interest, to
receive more detailed treatment at some future time.
Milton, in the beginning of Paradise Lost, which
appeared in 1667, makes Satan assemble all his
angels for continued battle against God. Among
the demons there enumerated, ancient gods also
appear ; they are, then, plainly regarded as devils.
Now Milton was not only a poet, but also a sound
scholar and an orthodox theologian ; we may there-
fore rest assured that his conception of the pagan
gods was dogmatically correct and in accord with
the prevailing views of his time. In him, therefore,
we have found a fixed point from which we can
look forwards and backwards ; as late as after
the middle of the seventeenth century the early
Christian view of the nature of paganism evidently
persisted in leading circles.

1 This was written before the appearance of Mr. Gruppe's work,
Geschichte der klassischen Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte. Compare
infra, p. 154.

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 135

We seldom find definite heathen gods so pre-
cisely designated as demons as in Milton, but no
doubt seems possible that the general principle
was accepted by contemporary and earlier authors.
The chief work of the seventeenth century on ancient
religion is the De Theologia Gentili of G. I. Voss ; he
operates entirely with the traditional view. It may
be traced back through a succession of writings of
the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries. They are
all, or almost all, agreed that antique paganism was
the work of the devil, and that idolatry was, at any
rate in part, a worship of demons. From the
Middle Ages I can adduce a pregnant expression of
the same view from Thomas Aquinas ; in his treat-
ment of idolatry and also of false prophecy he
definitely accepts the demonology of the early
Church. On this point he appeals to Augustine,
and with perfect right ; from this it may presumably
be assumed that the Schoolmen in general had the
same view, Augustine being, as we know, an auth-
ority for Catholic theologians.

In mediaeval poets also we occasionally find the
same view expressed. As far as I have been able to
ascertain, Dante has no ancient gods among his
devils, and the degree to which he had dissociated
himself from ancient paganism may be gauged by the
fact that in one of the most impassioned passages of
his poem he addresses the Christian God as " Great
Jupiter." But he allows figures of ancient myth-
ology such as Charon, Minos and Geryon to appear
in his infernal world, and when he designates the
pagan gods as " false and untruthful," demonology
is evidently at the back of his mind. The mediaeval

136 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

epic poets who dealt with antique subjects took over
the pagan gods more or less. Sometimes, as in the
Romance of Troy, the Christian veneer is so thick that
the pagan groundwork is but slightly apparent ; in
other poems, such as the adaptation of the Aeneid,
it is more in evidence. In so far as the gods are
not eliminated they seem as a rule to be taken
over quite naively from the source without further
comment ; but occasionally the poet expresses his
view of their nature. Thus the French adapter of
Statius's Thebats, in whose work the Christian
element is otherwise not prominent, cautiously
remarks that Jupiter and Tisiphone, by whom his
heroes swear, are in reality only devils. Generally
speaking, the gods of antiquity are often designated
as devils in mediaeval poetry, but at times the
opinion that they are departed human beings crops
up. Thus, as we might expect, the theories of
ancient times still survive and retain their sway.

There is a domain in which we might expect to
find distinct traces of the survival of the ancient
gods in the mediaeval popular consciousness,
namely, that of magic. There does not, however,
seem to be much in it ; the forms of mediaeval magic
often go back to antiquity, but the beings it operates
with are pre-eminently the Christian devils, if we
may venture to employ the term, and the evil spirits
of popular belief. There is, however, extant a col-
lection of magic formulae against various ailments
in which pagan gods appear : Hercules and Juno
Regina, Juno and Jupiter, the nymphs, Luna Jovis
filia, Sol invictus. The collection is transmitted in
a manuscript of the ninth century ; the formulae

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 137

mostly convey the impression of dating from a much
eadier period, but the fact that they were copied in
the Middle Ages suggests that they were intended
for practical application.

A problem, the closer investigation of which
would no doubt yield an interesting result, but which
does not seem to have been much noticed, is the
European conception of the heathen religions with
which the explorers came into contact on their
great voyages of discovery. Primitive heathenism
as a living reality had lain rather beyond the
horizon of the Middle Ages ; when it was met with
in America, it evidently awakened considerable
interest. There is a description of the religion of
Peru and Mexico, written by the Jesuit Acosta at
the close of the sixteenth century, which gives us
a clear insight into the orthodox view of heathen-
ism during the Renaissance. According to Acosta,
heathenism is as a whole the work of the Devil ; he
has seduced men to idolatry in order that he himself
may be worshipped instead of the true God. All wor-
ship of idols is in reality worship of Satan. The
individual idols, however, are not identified with
individual devils ; Acosta distinguishes between the
worship of nature (heavenly bodies, natural objects
of the earth, right down to trees, etc.), the worship
of the dead, and the worship of images, but says
nothing about the worship of demons. At one
point only is there a direct intervention of the evil
powers, namely, in magic, and particularly in
oracles ; and here then we find, as an exception,
mention of individual devils which must be
imagined to inhabit the idols. The same con-

138 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

ception is found again as late as the seventeenth
century in a story told by G. I. Voss of the
time of the Dutch wars in Brazil. Arcissewski,
a Polish officer serving in the Dutch army,
had witnessed the conjuring of a devil among the
Tapuis. The demon made his appearance all right,
but proved to be a native well known to Arcissewski.
As he, however, made some true prognostications,
Voss, as it seems at variance with Arcissewski,
thinks that there must have been some super-
natural powers concerned in the game.

An exceptional place is occupied by the attempt
made during the Renaissance at an actual revival of
ancient paganism and the worship of its gods. It
proceeded from Plethon, the head of the Florentine
Academy, and seems to have spread thence to the
Roman Academy. The whole movement must be
viewed more particularly as an outcome of the
enthusiasm during the Renaissance for the culture
of antiquity and more especially for its philosophy
rather than its religion ; the gods worshipped were
given a new and strongly philosophical interpreta-
tion. But it is not improbable that the traditional
theory of the reality of the ancient deities may have
had something to do with it.

Simultaneously with demonology, and while it
was still acknowledged in principle, there flourished
more naturalistic conceptions of paganism, both in
the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. As
remarked above, the way was already prepared for
them during antiquity. In Thomas Aquinas we find
a lucid explanation of the origin of idolatry with a
reference to the ancient theory. Here we meet

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 139

with the familiar elements : the worship of the stars
and the cult of the dead. According to Thomas,
man has a natural disposition towards this error,
but it only comes into play when he is led astray by
demons. In the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies the Devil is mentioned oftener than the
demons (compare Acosta's view of the heathenism
of the American Indians) ; evidently the conception
of the nature of evil had undergone a change in the
direction of monotheism. In this way more scope
was given for the adoption of naturalistic views in
regard to the individual forms in which paganism
manifested itself than when dealing with a multi-
plicity of demons that answered individually to the
pagan gods, and we meet with systematic attempts
to explain the origin of idolatry by natural means,
though still with the Devil in the background.

One of these systems, which played a prominent
part, especially in the seventeenth century, is the
so-called Hebraism, i.e. the attempt to derive the
whole of paganism from Judaism. This fashion,
for which the way had already been prepared by
Jewish and Christian apologists, reaches its climax,
I think, with Abbot Huet, who derived all the gods
of antiquity (and not only Greek and Roman
antiquity) from Moses, and all the goddesses from
his sister ; according to him the knowledge of these
two persons had spread from the Jews to other
peoples, who had woven about them a web of
" fables." Alongside of Hebraism, which is Eu-
hemeristic in principle, allegorical methods of
interpretation were put forward. The chief repre-
sentative of this tendency in earlier times is Natalis

140 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

Comes (Noel du Comte), the author of the first
handbook of mythology ; he directly set himself the
task of allegorising all the myths. The allegories
are mostly moral, but also physical ; Euhemeristic
interpretations are not rejected either, and in several
places the author gives all three explanations side
by side without choosing between them. In the
footsteps of du Comte follows Bacon, in his De
Sapientia Veterum ; to the moral and physical
allegories he adds political ones, as when Jove's
struggle with Typhoeus is made to symbolise a wise
ruler's treatment of a rebellion. While these at-
tempts at interpretation, both the Euhemeristic and
the allegorical, are in principle a direct continuation
of those of antiquity, another method points plainly
in the direction of the fantastic notions of the
Middle Ages. As early as the sixteenth century the
idea arose of connecting the theology of the ancients
with alchemy. The idea seemed obvious because the
metals were designated by the names of the planets,
which are also the names of the gods. It found
acceptance, and in the seventeenth century we have
a series of writings in which ancient mythology is
explained as the symbolical language of chemical
processes.

Within the limits of the supernatural explanation
the interest centred more and more in a single point :
the oracles. As far back as in Aquinas, " false
prophecy " is a main section in the chapter on
demons, whose power to foretell the future he
expressly acknowledges. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, when the interest in the pre-
diction of the future was so strong, the ancient

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 141

accounts of true prognostications were the real prop
of demonology. Hence demons generally play a
great part in these explanations, even though in
other cases the Devil fills the bill. Thus Acosta in
his account of the American religions ; thus Voss and
numerous other writers of the seventeenth century ;
and it is hardly a mere accident, one would think,
when Milton specially mentions Dodona and Delphi
as the seats of worship of the Greek demons.
Among a few of the humanists we certainly find an
attempt to apply the natural explanation even
here ; thus Caelius Rhodiginus asserted that a
great part (but not all !) of the oracular system
might be explained as priestly imposture, and his
slightly younger contemporary Caelius Calcagninus,
in his dialogue on oracles, seems to go still further
and to deny the power of predicting the future to
any other being than the true God. An exceptional
position is occupied by Pomponazzi, who in his little
pamphlet De Incantationihus seems to wish to de-
rive all magic, including the oracles, from natural
causes, though ultimately he formally acknowledges
demonology as the authoritative explanation. But
these advances did not find acceptance ; we find
even Voss combating the view on which they were
founded. It is characteristic of the power of demon-
ology in this domain that in support of his point of
view he can quote no less a writer than Machiavelli.
The author who opened battle in real earnest
against demonology was a Dutch scholar, one
van Dale, otherwise little known. In a couple of
treatises written about the close of the seventeenth
century he tried to show that the whole of idolatry

142 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

(as well as the oracles in particular) was not depen-
dent on the intervention of supernatural beings, but
was solely due to imposture on the part of the priests.
Van Dale was a Protestant, so he easily got over
the unanimous recognition of demonology by the
Fathers of the Church. The accounts of demons in
the Old and New Testaments proved more difficult
to deal with ; it is interesting to see how he wriggles
about to get round them — and it illustrates most
instructively the degree to which demonology affords
the only reasonable and natural explanation of
paganism on the basis of early Christian belief.

Van Dale's books are learned works written in
Latin, full of quotations in Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, and moreover confused and obscure in
exposition, as is often the case with Dutch writings
of that time. But a clever Frenchman, Fontenelle,
took upon himself the task of rendering his work on
the oracles into French in a popular and attractive
form. His book called forth an answering pamphlet
from a Jesuit advocating the traditional view ; the
little controversy seems to have made some stir in
France about the year 1700. At any rate Banier,
who, in the beginning of the eighteenth century,
treated ancient mythology from a Euhemeristic
point of view, gave some consideration to it. His
own conclusion is — in 1738 ! — that demonology
cannot be dispensed with for the explanation of the
oracles. He gives his grounds for this in a very
sensible criticism of van Dale's priestly fraud
theory, the absurdity of which he exposes with
sound arguments.

Banier is the last author to whom I can point for

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 143

the demon-theory apphed as an explanation of a
phenomenon in ancient religion ; I have not found
it in any other my thologist of the eighteenth century,
and even in Banier, with the exception of this single
point, everything is explained quite naturally ac-
cording to the best Euhemeristic models. But in
the positive understanding of the nature of ancient
paganism no very considerable advance had
actually been made withal. A characteristic ex-
ample of this is the treatment of ancient religion
by such an eminent intellect as Giambattista Vico.
In his Scienza Niiova, which appeared in 1725, as
the foundation of his exposition of the religion of
antiquity he gives a characterisation of the mode of
thought of primitive mankind, which is so pertinent
and psychologically so correct that it anticipates the
results of more than a hundred years of research.
Of any supernatural explanation no trace is found
in him, though otherwise he speaks as a good Cath-
olic. But when he proceeds to explain the nature of
the ancient ideas of the gods in detail, all that it
comes to is a series of allegories, among which the
politico-social play a main part. Vico sees the
earliest history of mankind in the light of the
traditions about Rome ; the Graeco-Roman gods,
then, and the myths about them, become to him
largely an expression of struggles betwen the
" patricians and plebeians " of remote antiquity.

Most of the mythology of the eighteenth century
is like this. The Euhemeristic school gradually
gave up the hypothesis of the Jewish religion as the
origin of paganism ; Banier, the chief representative
of the school, still argues at length against Hebraism.

144 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

In its place, Phoenicians, Ass5n:ians, Persians and,
above all, Egyptians, are brought into play, or, as
in the case of the Englishman Bryant, the whole
of mythology is explained as reminiscences of the
exploits of an aboriginal race, the Cuthites, which
never existed. The allegorist school gradually
rallied round the idea of the cult of the heavenly
bodies as the origin of the pagan religions ; as late
as the days of the French Revolution, Dupuis, in a
voluminous work, tried to trace the whole of ancient
religion and mythology back to astronomy. On the
whole the movement diverged more and more from
Euhemerism towards the conception of Greek reli-
gion as a kind of cult of nature ; when the sudden
awakening to a more correct understanding came
towards the close of the century, Euhemerism was
evidently already an antiquated view. Thus, since
the Renaissance, by a slow and very devious process
of development, a gradual approach had been made
to a more correct view of the nature of ancient
religion. After the Devil had more or less taken the
place of the demons, the rest of demonology, the
moral allegory, Hebraism and Euhemerism were
eliminated by successive stages, and nature-sym-
bolism was reached as the final stage.

We know now that even this is not the correct
explanation of the nature and origin of the concep-
tion of the gods prevailing among the ancients.
Recent investigations have shown that the Greek
gods, in spite of their apparent simplicity and clarity,
are highly complex organisms, the products of a long
process of development to which the most diverse
factors have contributed. In order to arrive at this

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 145

result another century of work, with many attempts
in the wrong direction, has been required. The idea
that the Greek gods were nature-gods really domi-
nated research through almost the whole of the
nineteenth century. If it has now been dethroned
or reduced to the measure of truth it contains — for
undoubtedly a natural object enters as a component
into the essence of some Greek deities — this is in the
first place due to the intensive study of the reUgions
of primitive peoples, living or obsolete ; and the
results of this study were only applied to Greek
religion during the last decade of the century.
But the starting-point of modern history of religion
lies much farther back : its beginnings date from
the great revival of historical research which was
inaugurated by Rousseau and continued by Herder.
Henceforward the unhistorical methods of the age
of enlightenment were abolished, and attention
directed in real earnest towards the earlier stages
of human civilisation.

This, however, carries us a step beyond the
point of time at which this sketch should, strictly
speaking, stop. For by the beginning of the
eighteenth century — but not before — the negative
fact which is all important in this connexion had
won recognition : namely, that there existed no
supernatural beings latent behind the Greek ideas
of their gods, and corresponding at any rate in some
degree to them ; but that these ideas must be
regarded and explained as entirely inventions of the
human imagination.

CHAPTER IX

AT the very beginning of this inquiry it was
emphasised that its theme would in the
main be the rehgious views of the upper
class, and within this sphere again especially the
views of those circles which were in close touch with
philosophy. The reason for this is of course in the
first place that only in such circles can we expect
to find expressed a point of view approaching to
positive atheism. But we may assuredly go further
than this. We shall hardly be too bold in asserting
that the free-thinking of philosophically educated
men in reality had very slight influence on the great
mass of the population. Philosophy did not pene-
trate so far, and whatever degree of perception we
estimate the masses to have had of the fact that the
upper layer of society regarded the popular faith
with critical eyes — and in the long run it could not
be concealed — we cannot fail to recognise that
religious development among the ancients did not
tend towards atheism. Important changes took
place in ancient religion during the Hellenistic Age
and the time of the Roman Empire, but their causes
were of a social and national kind, and, if we confine
ourselves to paganism, they only led to certain
gods going out of fashion and others coming in.

The utmost we can assert is that a certain weakening

146

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 147

of the religious life may have been widely prevalent
during the time of transition between the two ages —
the transition falls at somewhat different dates in
the eastern and western part of the Empire — but
that weakening was soon overcome. , '

Now the peculiar result of this investigation of
the state of religion among the upper classes seems
to me to be this : the curve of intensity of religious
feeling which conjecture leads us to draw through
the spiritual life of the ancients as a whole, that
same curve, but more distinct and sharply accen-
tuated, is found again in the relations of the upper
classes to the popular faith. Towards the close of
the fifth century it looks as if the cultured classes
that formed the centre of Greek intellectual life were
outgrowing the ancient religion. The reaction
which set in with Socrates and Plato certainly
checked this movement, but it did not stop it.
Cynics, Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans and
Sceptics, in spite of their widely differing points of
view, were all entirely unable to share the religious
ideas of their countrymen in the form in which they
were cast in the national religion. However many
allowances they made, their attitude towards the
popular faith was critical, and on important points
they denied it. It is against the background thus
resulting from ancient philosophy's treatment of
ancient religion that we must view such phenomena
as Polybius, Cicero, and Pliny the Elder, if we wish
to understand their full significance.

On the other hand, it is certain that this was not
the view that conquered in the end among the
educated classes in antiquity. The lower we come

148 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

down in the Empire the more evident does the posi-
tive relation of the upper class to the gods of the
popular faith become. Some few examples have
already been mentioned in the preceding pages. In
philosophy the whole movement finds its typical
expression in demonology, which during the later
Empire reigned undisputed in the one or two schools
that still retained any vitality. It is significant
that its source was the earlier Platonism, with its
very conservative attitude towards popular belief,
and that it was taken over by the later Stoic school,
which inaugurated the general religious reaction
in philosophy. And it is no less significant that
demonology was swallowed whole by the mono-
theistic religion which superseded ancient paganism,
and for more than a thousand years was the recog-
nised explanation of the nature thereof.

In accordance with the line of development here
sketched, the inquiry has of necessity been focused
on two main points : Sophistic and the Hellenistic
Age. Now it is of peculiar interest to note what small
traces of pure atheism can after all be found here,
in spite of all criticism of the popular faith. We
have surmised its presence among a few prominent
personalities in fifth - century Athens ; we have
found evidence of its extension in the same place
in the period immediately following ; and in the
time of transition between the fourth and third
centuries we have thought it likely that it existed
among a very few philosophers, of whom none are in
the first rank. Everywhere else we find adjustments,
in part very serious and real concessions, to popular
belief. Not to mention the attitude towards wor-

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 149

ship, which was only hostile in one sect of slight
importance : the assumption of the divinity of
the heavenly bodies which was common to the
Academics, Peripatetics, and Stoics is really in
principle an acknowledgement of the popular faith,
whose conception of the gods was actually borrowed
and applied, not to some philosophical abstraction,
but to individual and concrete natural objects.
The anthropomorphic gods of the Epicureans point
in the same direction. In spite of their profound
difference from the beings that were worshipped and
believed in by the ordinary Greek, they are in
complete harmony with the opinion on which all
potytheism is based : that there are individual
beings of a higher order than man. And though
the Stoics in theory confined their acknowledgment
of this doctrine to the heavenly bodies, in practice —
even if we disregard demonology — they consistently
brought it to bear upon the anthropomorphic gods,
in direct continuation of the Socratic reaction against
the atheistic tendencies of Sophistic.

If now we ask ourselves what may be the cause
of this peculiar dualism in the relationship of
ancient thought to religion, though admitting the
highly complex nature of the problem, we can
scarcely avoid recognising a certain principle.
Ancient thought outgrew the ancient popular faith ;
that is beyond doubt. Hence its critical attitude.
But it never outgrew that supernaturalist view
which was the foundation of the popular faith.
Hence its concessions to the popular faith, even
when it was most critical, and its final surrender
thereunto. And that it never outgrew the founda-

150 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

tion of the popular faith is connected with its whole
conception of nature and especially with its con-
ception of the universe. We cannot indeed deny
that the ancients had a certain feeling that nature
was regulated by laws, but they only made imperfect
attempts at a mechanical theory of nature in which
this regulation of the world by law was carried
through in principle, and with one brilliant exception
they adhered implicitly to the geocentric concep-
tion of the universe. We may, I think, venture to
assert with good reason that on such assumptions
the philosophers of antiquity could not advance
further than they did. In other words, on the given
hypotheses the supernaturalist view was the correct
one, the one that was most probable, and therefore
that on which people finally agreed. A few chosen
spirits may at any time by intuition, without any
strictly scientific foundation, emancipate them-
selves entirely from religious errors ; this also hap-
pened among the ancients, and on the first occasion
was not unconnected with an enormous advance in
the conception of nature. But it is certain that the
views of an entire age are always decisively con-
ditioned by its knowledge and interpretation of the
universe surrounding it, and cannot in principle be
emancipated therefrom.

Seen from this point of view, our brief sketch of
the attitude of posterity towards the religion of the
pagan world will also not be without interest. If,
after isolated advances during the mighty awaken-
ing of the Renaissance, it is not until the transition
from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century that
we find the modern atheistic conception of the

ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY 151

nature of the gods of the ancients estabUshed in
principle and consistently applied, we can scarcely
avoid connecting this fact with the advance of
natural science in the seventeenth century, and not
least with the victory of the heliocentric system.
After the close of antiquity the pagan gods had re-
ceded to a distance, practically speaking, because
they were not worshipped any more. No one
troubled himself about them. But in theory one
had got no further, i.e. no advance had been made
on the ancients, and no advance could be made
as long as supernaturalism was adhered to in
connexion with the ancient view of the universe.
Through monotheism the notions of the divinity
of the sun, moon and planets had certainly been got
rid of, but not so the notion of the world — i.e. the
globe enclosed within the firmament — as filled with
personal beings of a higher order than man ; and
even the duty of turning the spheres to which the
heavenly bodies were believed to be fastened was —
quite consistently — assigned to some of these beings.
As long as such notions were in operation, not only
were there no grounds for denying the reality of the
pagan gods, but there was every reason to assume it.
So far we may rightly say that it was Copernicus,
Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Kepler and Newton that
did away with the traditional conception of ancient
paganism.

Natural science, however, furnishes only the
negative result that the gods of polytheism are not
what they are said to be : real beings of a higher
order than man. To reveal what they are, other
knowledge is required. This was not attained until

152 ATHEISM IN PAGAN ANTIQUITY

long after the revival of natural science in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. The vacillation
in the eighteenth century between various theories
of the explanation of the nature of ancient polytheism
— theories which were all false, though not equally
false — is in this respect significant enough ; likewise
the gradual progress which characterises research
in the nineteenth century, and which may be indi-
cated by such names as Heyne, Buttmann, K. O.
Miiller, Lobeck, Mannhardt, Rohde, and Usener,
to mention only some of the most important and
omitting those still alive. Viewed in this light
the development sketched here within a narrowly
restricted field is typical of the course of European
intellectual history from antiquity down to our day.

NOTES

Of Atheism in Antiquity as defined here no treatment is known
to me ; but there exist an older and a newer book that deal with
the question within a wider compass. The first of these is Krische,
Die theologischen Lehren der griechischen Denker (Gottingen, 1840);
it is chiefly concerned with the philosophical conceptions of deity,
but it touches also on the relations of philosophers to popular
religion. The second is Decharme, La critique des traditions
religieuses chez les Grecs (Paris, 1904) ; it is not fertile in new points
of view, but it has suggested several details which I might else
have overlooked. Such books as Caird, The Evolution of Theology
in the Greek Philosophers (Glasgow, 1904), or Moon, Religious
Thought of the Greeks (Cambridge, Mass., 1919), barely touch on
the relation to popular belief ; of Louis, Les doctrines religieuses
des philosophes grecs, I have not been able to make use. I regret
that Poul Helms, The Conception of God in Greek Philosophy
(Danish, in Studier for Sprog- og Oldtidsforskning, No. 115), was not
published until my essay was already in the press. General works
on Atheism are indicated in Aveling's article, "Atheism," in the
Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. ii., but none of them seem to be found
at Copenhagen. In the Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, ii.,
there is a detailed article on Atheism in its relation to different
religions ; the section treating of Antiquity is written by Pearson,
but is meagre. Works like Zeller, Philosophic der Griechen, and
Gomperz, Griechische Denker, contain accounts of the attitude of
philosophers (Gomperz also includes others) towards popular
belief ; of these books I have of course made use throughout, but
they are not referred to in the following notes except on special
occasion. Scattered remarks and small monographs on details
are naturally to be found in plenty. Where I have met with
such and found something useful in them, or where I express
dissent from them, I have noticed it ; but I have not aimed at
exhausting the literature on my subject. On the other hand I
have tried to make myself completely acquainted with the first-
hand material, wherever it gave a direct support for assuming '
Atheism, and to take my own view of it. In many cases, however,
the argumentation has had to be indirect : it has been necessary
to draw inferences from what an author does not sav in a certain
connexion when he might be expected to say it, or what he gener-
ally and throughout avoids mentioning, or from his general
manner and peculiarities in his way of speaking of the gods. In
such cases I have often had to be content with my previous know-
ledge and my general impression of the facts ; but then I have

154 NOTES

as a rule made use of the important modern literature on the
subject. In working out the sketch of the ideas after the end of
Antiquity, I have been almost without any guidance in modern
literature. I have accordingly had to try, on the basis of a super-
ficial acquaintance with some of the chief types, to form for myself,
as best I might, some idea of the course of the evolution ; but I
have not been able to go systematically through the immense
material, however fruitful such a research appeared to be. In
the meantime, between the publication of my Danish essay and
this translation, there has appeared a work by Mr. Gruppe,
Geschichte der klassischen Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte (Leip-
zig, 1 921). My task in writing my last chapters would have been
much easier if I could have made use of Mr. Gruppe's learned
and comprehensive treatment of the subject ; but it would not
have been superfluous, for Mr. Gruppe deals principally with the
history of classical mythology, not with the history of the beUef
in the gods of antiquity. So I have ventured to let my sketch
stand as it is, only reducing some of the notes (which I had on pur-
pose made rather full, to aid others who might pursue the s.bject)
by referring to Mr. Gruppe instead of to the sources themselves.

For kindly helping me to find my bearings in out-of-the-way
parts of my subject, I am indebted to my colleagues F. Buhl, I. L.
Heiberg, I. C. Jacobsen and Kr. Nyrop, as well as to Prof. Martin
P. Nilsson in Lund.

P. I. Definition of Atheism : see the article in the Catholic
Encycl. vol. ii.

P. 5. Atheism : see Murray, New Engl. Diet., under Atheism
and -ism. The word seems to have come up in the Renaissance.

P. 6. Criminal Law at Athens : see Lipsius, Das attische Recht
und Rechtsverfahren, i. p. 358. — The definition in Aristotle, de virt.
et vit. 7, p. 12510, has, I think, no legal foundation.

P. 9. On the legal foundation for the trials of Christians, see
Mommsen, Der Religions/revel nach romischem Recht (Ges. Schr.
iii. p. 389). — Mommsen goes too far, I think, in supposing a legal
foundation for the trials of Christians ; above all, I do not beUeve
that the defection from the Roman religion was ever considered
as maiestas in the technical sense of the word, the more so as it is
certain that, after the earliest period, no difference was made in
the treatment of citizens and aUens.

P. 13. Lists of atheists : Cicero, de nat. deor. i. 1,2 (comp.
1.23,26). Sext. Emp. hypotyjj^. 21^ ; adv. math. g. ^o. Aehan,
v.h. 2. 31 ; de nat. ^'^^f' i'^ — Tj^p predicate atheos is once appUed
to ^^'^''"•■nr"'^"'^ b^^"^-^""'^''^^''^" ai/thor (Irenaeus : see Diels, Vorsokr.
46, A 1 1 3 ; compare also Marcellinus, vit. Thuc. (see below, note
on p. 29). Of such isolated cases I have taken no account.

P. 16. On the dualism in the Greek conception of the nature of
gods see Nagelsbach, Horn. Theol. p. 11. — Pindar : 01. i. 28, 9. 35 ;
Pyth. 3. 27.

P. 17. Xenophanes : Einhorn, Zeit- und Streitfragen der
modemen Xenophanesforschtmg (Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos. xxxi.).

P. 18. Xenophanes's age: Diels, Vorsokr. 11, B 8. — His
criticism of Homer and Hesiod : ibid. 11, 12. — Titans and Giants :

NOTES 155

ibid. I. 22. — Criticism of Anthropomorphism : ibid. 14-16. —
Divination : Cic. de div. i. 3, 5.

P. 19. On Xenophanes's conception of God, comp. Vorsokr.
II, B 23-26; on the identification of God with the universe:
Vorsokr. 11, A 30, 31, 33-36. — Cicero : de div. i. 3, 5.

P. 21. For Xenophanes's theology, comp. Freudenthal, Arch.
f. Gesch. d. Philos. i. p. 322, and Zeller's criticism, ibid. p. 524.
Agreeing with Freudenthal : Decharme, p. 46 ; Campbell, Religion
in Greek Literature, p. 293.

P. 21. Parmenides does not even appear to have designated
his " Being " as God (Zeller, i. p. 563).

P. 23. In the eighteenth century people discussed diffusely
the question whether Thales was an atheist (of course in the
sense in which the word was taken at that time) ; comp. Tenne-
mann, Gesch. d. Philos. i. pp. 62 and 422. Tennemann remarks
quite truly that the question is put wrongly.

P. 24. Thales : Diels, Vorsokr. i, A 22-23. — Attitude of
Democritus towards popular belief : Vorsokr. 55, A 74-79 ; comp.
1 16, 1 17 ; B 166, and also B 30. Diels, Ueber den Ddmonenglauben
des D. {Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos. 1894, p. 154).

P. 25. Trial of Anaxagoras : Vorsokr. 46, A i, 17, 18, 19.
P. 26. Ram's head : Vorsokr. 46, A 16.

P. 27. Geffcken (in Hermes, 42, p. 127) has tried to make out
something about a criticism of popular belief by Anaxagoras
from some passages in Aristophanes {Nub. 398) and Lucian (Tim.
10, etc.), but I do not think he has succeeded. — Pericles a free-
thinker : Plut. Pericl. 6 and 38 ; comp. Decharme, p. 160. —
Personality of Anaxagoras : Vorsokr. 46, A 30 (Aristotle, End.
Ethics, A 4, p. 121 56, 6).

P. 28. Herodotus : 8, 77. — Sophocles : Oed. rex. 498, 863. —
Diopeithes : Plut. Pericl. 32 (Vorsokr. 46, A 17). — Thucydides :
Classen in the preface to his 3rd ed., p. Ivii.

P. 29. Thucydides, a disciple of Anaxagoras : Marcellinus,
vit. Thuc. 22. — Generally Thucydides is thought to have been more
conservative in his religious opinions than I consider probable ;
see Classen, loc. cit. ; Decharme, p. 83 ; Gertz in his preface to the
Danish translation of Thucydides, p. xxvii. — Hippo : Vorsokr. 26,
A 4, 6, 8, 9 ; B 2, 3.

P. 30. Aristotle : Vorsokr. 26, A 7. — Diogenes an atheist:
Aelian, v.h. 2, 31. — The air his god : Vorsokr. 51, A 8 (he thought
that Homer identified Zeus with the air, and approved of this as
ov fivåiKug, aAA' d'A-/)éu: ilpnuivoy) ; B 5, 7, 8. — Allusions to his doctrines
by Aristophanes : Nub. 225, 828 {Vorsokr. 51, C i, 2).

P. 31. A chief representative of the naively critical view of
natural phenomena is for us Herodotus. The locus classiciis is
vii. 129 ; comp. Gomperz, Griech, Denker, i. p. 208 ; Heiberg,
Festskrift til Ussing (Copenhagen, 1900), p. 91 ; Decharme, p. 69. —
Principal passages about Diagoras : Sext. Emp. adv. math. 9, 53 ;
Suidas, art. Diagoras II.) ; schol. Aristoph. Nub. 830 (the legend);
Suidas, art. Diagoras I.); Aristoph. Av. 1071 with schol.; schol.
Aristoph. Ran. 320 ; [Lysias] vi. 17 ; Diod. xiii. 16 (the decree) ;
Philodem. de piet. p. 89 Gomp. (comments of Aristoxenus) ;

156 NOTES

Aelian, v.h. ii. 22 (legislation at Mantinea). — Wilamowitz {Textgesch.
d. Lyy. p. 80) has tried to save the tradition by supposing that
the acme of Diagoras has been put too early. Comp. also his
remarks, Griech. Verskunst. p. 426, where he has taken up the
question again with reference to my treatment of it. As he has
now conceded the possibility of referring the legislation to the
earlier date, the difference between us is really very slight, and it
is of course possible, perhaps even probable, that the acme of the
poet has been antedated. — Aristoph. Av. 107 1 : "On this very
day it is made public, that if one of you kills Diagoras from Melos,
he shall have a talent, and if one kills one of the dead tyrants, he
shall have a talent." The parallel between the two decrees, of
which the latter is of course an invention of Aristophanes, would
be without point if the decree against Diagoras was not as futile
as the decree against the tyrants (i.e. the sons of Peisistratus, who
had been dead some three-quarters of a century), that is. if it did
not come many years too late. — Wilamowitz {Griech. Verskunst,
loc. cit.) takes the sense to be : " You will not get hold of Diagoras
any more than you did of the tyrants." But this, besides being
somewhat pointless, does not agree so well as my explanation
with the introductory words : "On this very da3^" On the other
hand, I never meant to imply that Diagoras was dead in 415,
but only that his offence was an old one — just as that of Protagoras
probably was (see p. 39).

P. 39. Trial of Protagoras : Vorsokr. 74, A 1-4, 23 ; the
passage referring to the gods : ibid. B 4. — Plato : Theaet. p. 162^^
(Vorsokr. 74, A 23).

P. 41. Distinction between belief and knowledge by Prota-
goras : Gomperz, Griech. Denker, i. p. 359.

P. 42. Prodicus : Vorsokr. yj, B 5. Comp. Norvin, Allegorien i
den græske Philosophi {Edda, 1Q19), p. 82. I cannot, however,
quite adopt Norvin's view of the theory of Protagoras.

P. 44. Critias : Vorsokr. 81, B 25. — W. Nestle, Jahrbb. f.
Philol. xi. (1903), pp. 81 and 178, gives an exhaustive treatment of
the subject, but I cannot share his view of it.

P. 46. Euripides : Suppl. 201. — Aloschion : Trag. Fragm. ed.
Nauck (2nd ed.), p. 813. — ^Plato : Rep. ii. 3696.

P. 47. Democritus : Reinhardt in Hermes, xlvii (1912), p. 503
In spite of Wilamowitz's objections (in his Platon, ii. p. 214), I still
consider it probable that Plato alludes to a philosophical theory. —
Protagoras on the original state : Vorsokr. 74, B 86.

P. 48. Euripides : Electra, y^y (Euripides does not believe in
the tale that the sun reversed its course on account of Thyestes's
■fraud against Atreus, and then adds : " Fables that terrify men
are a profit to the worship of the gods "). — Aristotle : Metaph. A 8,
10746 ; see text, p. 85. — Polybius : vi. 56 ; see text pp. 90 and
114. — Plato's Gorgias, p. 482 and foil.

P. 49. — Callicles : see e.g. Wilamowitz, Platon, i. p. 208.

P. 50. — Thrasymachus : Plato, Rep. i. pp. 338c, 343« ; comp.
also ii. p. 3586. His remark on Providence (Vorsokr. 78, B 8) runs
thus : " The gods do not see the things that are done among men ;
if they did, they would not overlook the greatest human good.

NOTES 157

justice. For we find that men do not follow it." Comp. text,
p. 6i. — Diagoras as Critias's source : Nestle, Jahrbb., 1903, p. loi.

P. 51, Euripides : see W. Nestle, Euripides (Stuttgart, 1901)
pp. 51-152. Here, too, the material is set forth exhaustively ; the
results seem to me inadmissible. Browning's theory (The Ring
and the Book, x. 1661 foil.) that Euripides did believe in the exist-
ence of the gods, but did not believe them to be perfect, is a possible,
perhaps even a probable, explanation of many of his utterances ;
but it will hardly fit all of them. I have examined the question
in an essay, "Browning om Euripides " in my Udvalgte Afhand-
linger, p. 55.

P. 52. Gods identified with the Elements : Bacch. 274; fragm.
839' ^77, 941 (Nestle, p. 153).

P. 53. Polemic against sophists : Nestle, p. 206. — B eller ophon :
fragm. 286.

P. 54. " If the gods " : fragm. 292, 7.

P. 55. Melanippe : fragm. 480. The words are said to have
given offence at the rehearsal, so that Euripides altered them at
the production of the play (Plut. Amat. ch. 13). — Aeschylus :
Agam. 160. — Aristophanes: Thesmoph. 450. — In the Frogs, 892,
Euripides prays to the Ether and other abstractions, not to the
gods. — Clouds : 1371.

P. 56. Plato : Repuhl. viii. p. 568«. — Quotation from Mela-
nippe : Plut. Amat. 13.

P. 57. Aristophanes and Naturalism : see note to p. 30.

P. 58. Denial of the gods in the Clouds, 247, 367, 380, 423, 627,
817,825, 1232. — Moral of thepiece: 1452-1510. — In Aristophanes's
own travesties of the gods, scholars have found evidence for a
weakening of popular belief, but this is certainly wrong ; comp.
Decharme, p. 109. — Words like " believe " and " belief " do not
cover the Greek word uoyJ^nv, which signifies at once "believe "
and " be in the habit," " use habitually," so that it covers both
belief and worship — an ambiguity that is characteristic of Greek
religion. — Xenophon : Memorab. i. i ; Apol. Socr. 10 and foil.

P. 59. Plato : Apol. p. 24b (the indictment) ; 266 (the re-
futation).

P. 60. Aristodemus : Xenoph. Memor. i. 4. — Cinesias : De-
charme, p. 135. — The Hermocopidae : Decharme, p. 152. Beloch,
Hist, of Greece, ii. i, p. 360, has another explanation. To my argu-
ment it is of no consequence what special motive is assigned for
the crime, as long as it is a political one.

P. 61. Plato on impiety : Laws, x. p. 8866 ; comp. xii. p. 967a.
Curiously enough, the same tripartition of the wrong attitude
towards the gods occurs already in the Republic, ii. p. 365^,
where it is introduced incidentally as well known and a matter
of course.

P. 62. Euripides : e.g. Hecuba, 488 ; Suppl. 608. — Reference
to Anaxagoras : Laws, x. p. 886d ; to Sophistic, 8896.

P. 65. Plato in the Apology : p. 19c. — Socrates 's daimonion
a proof of asebeia : Xenoph. Memorab. i. i, 2 ; Apol. Socr. 12 ;
Plato, Apol. p. 3irf.

P. 66. Accusation of teaching the doctrine of Anaxagoras :

158 NOTES

Plato, Apol. p. 26d ; comp. Xenoph. Memor. i. i, lo. — Plato's
defence of Socrates : Apol. p. 27a.

P. 67. Xenophon's defence of Socrates : Memor. i. i, 2 ; 6 foil.,
10 foil. — Teleological view of nature : Xenoph. Memor. i. 4 ; iv. 3. —
On the religious standpoint of Socrates, comp. my Udvalgte Afhand-
linger, p. 38.

P. 68. Plato's Apology, p. 2id, 23a and /, etc. — The gods all-
knowing : Odyss. iv. 379 and 468 ; comp. Nagelsbach, Hom. Theol.
p. 18 ; Nachhom. Theol. p. 23.

P. 69. The gods just : Nagelsbach, Hom. Theol. p. 297 ; Nach-
hom. Theol. p. 27.

P. 71. The relation between early religious thought and Delphi
has been explained correctly by Sam Wide, Einleit. in die Alier-
tumswissensch., ii. p. 221 ; comp. also I. L. Heiberg in Tilskueren,
19 1 9, ii. p. 44. — Honours shown to Pindar at Delphi : schol. Pind.
ed. Drachm, i. p. 2, 14 ; 5, 6. Pausan, x. 24. 5.

P. 72. Plato on the Delphic Oracle : Apol. p. 2oe. On the
following comp. I. L. Heiberg, loc. cit. p. 45. — Socrates on his
daimonion : Plato, Apol. p. 31c.

P. 74. Antisthenes : Ritter, Hist, philos. Gr.^ 285. — On the
later Cynics, especially Diogenes, see Diog. Laert. vi. 105 (the gods
are in need of nothing) ; Julian, Or. vi. p. 199& (Diogenes did not
worship the gods).

P. 75. Cyrenaics : Diog. Laert. ii. 91. — Date of Theodorus :
Diog. Laert. ii. loi, 103 ; his book on the gods : Diog. Laert. ii. 97,
Sext. Emp. adv. math. ix. 55 ; his trial : Diog. Laert. ii. loi.

P. 76. Theodorus's book used by Epicurus : Diog. Laert. ii. 97.
— Zeller : Philos. d. Griechen, ii. i, p. 925. — Euthyphron : see
especially p. 146 foil.

P. yy. Criticism of Mythology in the Republic : ii. p. ;}yyb foil. ;
worship presupposed : e.g. iii. p. 41 5^ ; v. p. 4595, 461a, 468^, 469a,
470fl ; vii. p. 5406 ; reference to the Oracle : iv. p. 4276. — Timaeus :
p. 4.od foil. — Laws, rules of worship : vi. p. 759a, vii. p. 967a and
elsewhere, x. p. 909^ ; capital punishment for atheists : x. p. 909a.
Comp. above, on p. 61.

P. 78. Atheism a sin of youth : Laws, x. p. 888a. — Goodness
and truth of the gods : Republ. ii. p. 379a, 380^, 382a. — Belief in
Providence: Laws, x. p. 885c, etc.; Republ. x. p. 612«; Apol.
p. 4id.

P. 79. Laws, X. p. 888(^, 8936 foil., especially 899c-^ ; comp.
also xii. p. gGya-c. — Timaeus : p. 40d-f. Comp. Laws, xii. p. 9486.

P. 80. The gods in the Republic, ii. p. 380c?. This passage,
taken together with Plato's general treatment of popular belief,
might lead to the hypothesis that it was Plato's doctrine of ideas
rather than the rationalism of his youth that brought about strained
relations between his thought and popular belief. I incline to
think that such is the case ; but there is a long step even from such
a state of things to downright atheism, and the stress Plato always
laid on the belief in Providence is a strong argument in favour of
his belief in the gods, for he could never make his ideas act in the
capacity of Providence. — The gods as creators of mankind : Timaeus,
p. 41a foil.

NOTES 159

P. 8i. Xenocrates : the exposition of his doctrine given in the
text is based upon Heinze's Xenokrates (Leipzig, 1892).

P. 83. Trial of Aristotle : Diog. Laert. v. 5 ; Athen. xv. p. 696. —
The writings of Aristotle that have come down to us are almost
all of them compositions for the use of his disciples, and were not
accessible to the general public during his lifetime.

P. 84. On the religious views of Aristotle see in general Zeller,
ii. 2, p. 787 (Engl, transl. ii. p. 325) ; where the references to his
writings are given in full. In the following I indicate only a few
passages of special interest. — Discussion of worship precluded :
Top. A, xi. p. 105a, 5. — Aristotle's Will : Diog. Laert. v. 15. — The
gods as determining the limits of the human : e.g. Nic. Eth. K,
\\\\. p. 1 1786, T,;^ : "(the wise) will also be in need of outward
prosperity, as he is (only) a man." — Reservations in speaking of
the gods, e.g. Nic. Eth. K, ix. p. 1179«, 13 : "he who is active in
accordance with reason . . . must also be supposed to be the most
beloved of the gods ; for if the gods trouble themselves about
human affairs — and that they do so is generally taken for granted — it
must be probable that they take pleasure in what is best and most
nearly related to themselves {and that must be the reason), and
that they reward those who love and honour this most highly,"
etc. The passage is typical both of the hypothetical way of speak-
ing, and of the tmst in the direction of Aristotle's own conception
of the deity (whose essence is reason) ; also of the Socratic manner
of dealing with the gods.

P. 85. The passage quoted is from the Metaphysics, A viii.
p. 1074a, 38. Comp. Metaph. B, ii. p. 9976, 8 ; iv. p. loooa, 9.

P. S,6. Theophrastus : Diog. Laert. v. ^7.

P. 87. Strato : Diels, Ueber das physikal. System des S.,
Sitzungsber. d. Berl. Akad., 1893, P- ^oi. — His god the same as
nature : Cic. de nat. deor. i. 35.

P. 89. On the history of Hellenistic religion, see Wendland,
Die hellenistisch-romische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen z. Judentum
u. Christentum (Tiibingen, 1907).

P. 90. The passage quoted is Polyb. vi. 56, 6.

P. 92. On the Tyche-Religion, see Nagelsbach, Nachhom.
Theologie, p. 153 ; Lehrs, Populate Aufsdtze, p. 153 ; Rohde, Griech.
Roman, p. 267 (ist ed.) ; Wendland, p. 59. — Thucydides : see
Classen in the introduction to his (3rd) edition, pp. Ivii-lix, where
all the material is collected. A conclusive passage is vii. 36, 6,
where Thuc. makes the bigoted Nicias before a decisive battle
express the hope that " Fortune " will favour the Athenians. —
Demosthenes's dream : Aeschin. iii. jj. — Demosthenes on Tyche :
Olynth. ii. 22 ; de cor. 252.

P. 93. Demosthenes and the Pythia : Aesch. iii. 130. Comp.
ibid. 68, 131, 152 ; Plutarch, Dem. 20. — Demetrius of Phalerum :
Polyb. xxix. 21. — Temples of Tyche : Roscher, Mythol. Lex., art.
Fortuna.

P. 94. Tyche mistress of the gods : Trag. adesp. fragm. 506,
Nauck ; [Dio Chrys.] Ixiv. p. 331 R. — Polybius : i. i ; iii. 5, 7. —
The reservations against Tyche as a principle for the explaining of
historical facts, and the t\visting of the notion in the direction of

160 NOTES

Providence found in certain passages in Polybius, do not concern us
here ; they are probably due to the Stoic influence he underwent
during his stay at Rome. Comp. below, on p, 114, and see Cuntz,
Polybios (Leipzig, 1902), p. 43. — Pliny: ii. 22 foil.

P. 95. Tyche in the novels : Rohde, Griech. Rom. p. 280.

P. 97. Strabo : xvii. p. 813. — Plutarch : de def. or. 5 and 7.

P. 98. The Aetolians at Dium : Polyb. iv. 62 ; at Dodona,
iv. 67 ; Philip at Thermon, v. 9 ; Dicaearchus, xviii. 54. — Decay of
Roman worship : Wissowa, Religion u. Kultus d. Romer, p. 70 (2nd
ed.). To this work I must refer for indications of the sources ; but
the polemic in the text is chiefl}^ directed against "Wissowa.

P. 99. Ennius : comp. below, p. 112.

P. 100. Varro : in Augustine, de civ. Dei, vi. 2.

P. 103. Theology of the Stoics : Zeller, iii. i, p. 309-45.

P. 104. Demonology of the Stoics : Heinze, Xenokrates, p. 96.

P. 105. Epicurus's theology : Zeller, iii. i, pp. 427-38. Comp.
Schwartz, Charakterkopfe, ii. p. 43.

P. 106. Epicurus's doctrine of the eternity of the gods criticised :
Cic. de nat. deor. i. 68 foil.

P. 107. The Sceptics : Zeller, iii. i, pp. 507 and 521.

P. 109. Diogenes : see note on p. 74. — Bion : Diog. Laert. iv.
52 and 54.

P. 1 10. ]\Ienippos : R. Helm, Lukian w. Menipp (Leipzig and
Berlin, 1906).

P. III. Euhemerus : Jacoby in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclop.,
art. " Euemeros " ; Wendland, Hellenist. Kultur, p. 70. — Euhemerisra
before Euhemerus : Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 9 ; Wendland,
p. 67.

P. 112. A Danish scholar. Dr. J. P. Jacobsen (Afhandlinger og
Artikler, p. 490), seems to think that Euhemerus's theory was in-
fluenced by the worship of heroes. But there is nothing to show
that Euhemerus supposed his gods to have continued their exist-
ence after their death, though this would have been in accordance
with Greek belief even in the Hellenistic period ; he seems rather
to have insisted that they were worshipped as gods during their
lifetime (comp. Jacoby, loc. cit.).

P. 114. Euhemerism in Polybius : xxxiv. 2 ; comp. x. 10, 11. —
Relapse into orthodoxy : xxxvii. 9 (the decisive passage) ; xxxix.
19, 2 (concluding prayer to the gods); xviii. 54, 7-10 ; xxiii. 10, 14
(the gods punish impiety ; comp. xxxvii. 9, 16). There is a marked
contrast between such passages and the way Polybius speaks of
Philip's destruction of the sanctuary at Thermon ; he blames it
severely, but merely on political, not on religious grounds (v. 9-12).
Orthodox utterances in the older portions of the work (i. 84, 10 ;
X. 2, 7) may be due to that accommodation to popular belief which
Polybius himself acknowledges as justifiable (xvi. 12, 9), but also
to later revision. — Influence of Stoicism : Hirzel, Untersuchungen
zu Ciceros philos. Schriften, ii. p. 841.

P. 115. Cicero's Stoicism in his philosophy of religion : de nat.
deor. iii. 40, 95.

P. 116. Sanctuary to TuUia : Cic. ad Att. xii. 18 foil. ; several
of the letters (23, 25, 35, 36) show that Atticus disapproved of the

NOTES 161

idea, and that Cicero himself was conscious that it was unworthy
of him.

P. 117. Euhemeristic defence : /»-ag-w. co«so/. 14, 15. — Augustus's
reorganisation of the cults : Wissowa, Religion ii. Kultus d. Romer,
p. y-i). Recent scholars, especially when treating of Virgil (Heinze,
Vergils ep. Technik, 3rd ed. p. 291 ; Norden, Aeneis, vi. 2nd ed.
pp. 314, 318, 362), speak of the reform of Augustus as if it involved
a real revulsion of feeling in his contemporaries. This is in my
opinion a complete misunderstanding of the facts. Virgil's religious
views : Catal. v., Georgics, ii. 458.

P. 118. Pliny : hist. nat. ii. 1-27. The passages translated are
§§ 14 and 27.

P. 122. Seneca: fragm. 31-39, Haase. — Stoic polemic against
atheism : Epictetus, diss. ii. 20, 21 ; comp. Marcus Aurelius, vi.
44. — Later Cynicism : Zeller, iii. i, p. 763. — Oenomaus : only
preserved in excerpts by Euseb. praep. evang. 5-6 (a separate edition
is wanted). — His polemic directed against the priests : Euseb. 5,
p. 213c ; comp. Oenomaus himself, ibid. 6, p. 256^?.

P. 123. Lucian : see Christ, Gesch. d. gyiech. Litt. ii. 2, p. 550
(5th ed.), and R. Helm, Lukian u. Menipp (see note to p. 1 10).

P. 124. Timon : ch. x.

P. 126. On Lucian's caution in attacking the really popular
gods, see Wilamowdtz, in Kultur d. Gegenwart, i. 8, p. 248. — The
Jews atheists : Harnack, Der Vorwurf d. Atheismus in den 3 ersten
Jahrh. (Texte u. Unters., N.F.. xiii. 4). p. 3.

P. 127. I have met with no comprehensive treatment of Je\vish
and Christian polemic against Paganism ; Geffcken, Zwei griech.
Apologeten (Leipzig, 1907), is chiefly concerned with investigations
into the sources. I shall therefore indicate the principal passages
on which my treatment is based. — Polemic against images in the
Old Testament : Isaiah 44. 10 etc. ; in later literature : Epistle
of Jeremiah ; Wisdom of Solomon 13 foil. ; Philo, de decal. 65 foil.,
etc. — Euhemerism : Wisdom of Solomon 14.15 ; Epistle of Aristeas,
135 ; Sibyll. iii. 547, 554, 723. — Elements and celestial bodies :
Wisdom of Solomon 13 ; Philo, de decal. 52 foil. — The tenacity of
tradition is apparent from the fact that even Maimonides in his
treatise of idolatn.^ deals only mth star-worship and image-worship.
I know the treatise only from the Latin translation by D. Voss
(in G. I. Voss's Opera, vol. v.). — Demons : Deuteron. 32. 17 ;
Psalms 106. ^j ; add (according to LXX.) Isaiah 65. 11 ; Psalms
96. 5. Later writers : Enoch 19. 99,7 ; Baruch 4. 7. Such passages
as Jub. 22, 17 or Sibyll. prooem. 22 are possibly Euhemeristic. —
Fallen angels : Enoch, 19. — Philo's demonology : de gig. 6-18, etc.

P. 128. St. Paul : I Cor. 10. 20 ; comp. 8. 4 and Rom. i. 23.

P. 129. Image-worship and demon-worship not conciliated :
e.g. TertuU. Apologet. 10-15 ^"^ 22-23, comp. 27. — Jewish demon-
ology : Bousset, Religion d. Jiidentums, p. 326 (ist ed.). — Fallen
angels : e.g. Athenag. 24 foil. ; Augustine, Enchir. 9, 28 foil ;
de civ. Dei, viii. 22.

P. 130. Euhemerism in the Apologists : e.g. Augustine, de civ.
Dei, ii. 10; vi. 7; vii. 18 and 33; viii. 26. — Euhemerism and
demonology combined: e.g. Augustine, de civ. Dei, ii. 10; vii. 35 ;

162 NOTES

comp. vii. 28 fin. — Worship of the heavenly bodies : e.g. Aristid.
3 foil. ; Augustine, de civ. Dei, vii. 29 foil.

P. 131. Paganism a delusion caused by demons : Thomas Aq.
Summa theol. P. ii. 2, Q. 94, art. 4 ; comp. below, note on p. 135.

P. 133. For the following sketch I have found valuable material
in Gedike's essay, Ueber die mannigfaltigen Hypoihesen z. Erkldrung
d. Mythologie {Verm. Schriften, Berlin, 1 801, p. 61).

P. 134. Milton : Paradise Lost, i. 506. The theory that the
pagan oracles fell mute at the rise of Christianity is also found in
Milton, Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, st. xviii. foil.

P. 135. G. I. Voss ; De Theologia Gentili, lib. i. (published, 1642) —
Voss's view is in the main that idolatry as a whole is the work of the
Devil. What is worshipped is partly the heavenly bodies, partly
demons, partly (and principally) dead men ; most of the ancient
gods are identified with persons from the Old Testament. Demon-
worship is dealt with in ch. 6 ; it is proved among other things by
the true predictions of the oracles. Individual Greek deities are
identified with demons in ch. 7, in a context where oracles are
dealt with. On older works of the same tendency, see below,
note on p. 140 ; on Natalis Comes, ibid. A fuller treatment of
Voss's theories is found in Gruppe's work, § 25. — Thomas Aquinas :
Summa theol. P. ii. 2, Q. 94, art. 4 ; comp. also Q. 122, art. 2. —
Dante : Sommo Giove for God, Purg. vi. 118; his devils : Charon,
Inf. iii. 82 (109 expressly designated as " dimonio ") ; Minos,
Inf. V. 4 ; Geryon, Inf. xviii. (there are more of the same kind). —
" Dei falsi e bugiardi " : Inf. i. 72. (Plutus, who appears as a
devil in Inf. vii. was probably taken by Dante for an antique god ;
but the name may also be a classicising translation of Mammon.)

P. 136. Mediaeval epic poets : Nyrop, Den oldfranske Helte-
digtning, p. 255 and 260 ; Dernedde, Ueber die den altfranzos.
Dichtern bekannten Stoffe aus dem Altertum (Diss. Gotting. 1887). —
Confusion of ancient and Christian elements : Dernedde, p. 10 ;
the gods are devils : Dernedde, pp. 85, 88. — Euhemerism : Der-
nedde, p. 4. — I have tried to get a first-hand impression of the way
the gods are treated by the old French epic poets, but the material
is too large, and indexes suited to the purpose are wanting. The
paganism of the original is taken over naively, e.g., by Veldeke,
Eneidt, i. 45, 169. — On magic I have consulted Horst's Ddmonomagie
(Frankf. 181 8) ; and his Zauber-Bibliothek (Mainz, 1821-26) ;
Schindler, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters (Breslau, 1858) ; Maury,
La magie et I'astrologie dans I' antiquité et au moyen åge (Paris, i860).
These authors all agree that mediaeval magic is dependent on
antiquity, but that the pagan gods are superseded by devils (or the
Devil). The connexion in substance with antiquity, on which
Maury specially insists, is certain enough, but does not concern us
here, where the question is about the theory. In the Zauber-Bibl.
i. p. 137 (in the treatise Pneumatologia vera et occulta), the snake
Python is put down among the demons, with the remark that
Apollo was called after it. — Magic formulae with antique gods :
Heim, Incantamenta magica (in the Neue Jahrbb. f. Philologie,
Suppl. xix. 1893, p. 557 ; I owe this reference to the kindness of
my colleague. Prof. Groenbeck). Pradel, Religionsgesch. Vers. u.

NOTES 168

Vorarb. iii., has collected prayers and magic formulae from Italy
and Greece ; the}' do not contain names of antique gods.

P. 137. Acosta : Joseph de Acosta, Historia naturale e morale
delle Indie, Venice, 1596. I have used this Italian translation;
the original work appeared in 1590. — Demons at work in oracles ■
bk. V. ch. 9 ; in magic : ch. 25.

P. 138. Demon in Brazil : Voss, Theol. Gent. i. ch. 8. — Pagan
worship in the Florentine and Roman Academies : Voigt, Wieder-
belebung d. klass. Altertums, ii. p. 239 (2nd ed.) ; Hettner, Ital.
Studien, p. 174. — On the conception of the antique gods in the
earlier Middle Ages, see Gruppe, § 4. — Thomas Aquinas : Summa
theol. P. ii. 2, Q. 94, art. 4. — Curious and typical of the mediaeval
way of reasoning is the idea of seeking prototypes of the Christian
history of salvation in pagan mythology. See v. Eicken, Gesch. u.
System d. mittelalt. Weltanschauung (Stuttg. 1887), p. 648, and (with
more detail) F. Piper, Mythologie u. Symbolik d. christl. Kunst (Wei
mar, 1847-5 i), i- P- M3 ; comp. also Gruppe, § 8 foil. Good instances
are the myths in the Speculum humanae salvationis, chs. 3 and 24. —

P. 139. On Hebraism in general, see Gruppe, § 19 and §24 foil. ;
on Huet, § 28. Nevertheless, Huet operates with demonology in
connexion with the oracles (Dem. evang. ii. 9, 34, 4).

P. 140. On Natalis Comes, see Gruppe, § 19. In bk. i. ch. 7,
Natalis Comes gives an account of the origin of antiquity's con-
ceptions of the gods ; it has quite a naturalistic turn. Neverthe-
less, we find in ch. 16 a remark which shows that he embraced
demonology in its crudest form ; compare also the theory set forth
in ch, 10. His interpretations of myths are collected in bk. x. —
On Bacon, see Gruppe, § 22, Typhoeus-myth : introduct. to De
sapientia veterum. — Alchemistic interpretations : Gedike, Verm.
Schriften, p. 78 ; Gruppe, § 30. Of the works quoted by Gedike, I
have consulted Faber 's Panchymicum (Frankf. 1651) and Toll's
Fortuita (Amsterd. 1687). Faber has only some remarks on the
matter in bk. i. ch. 5 ; by Toll the alchemistic interpretation is
carried through. Gedike quotes, moreover, a work by Suarez de
Salazar, which must date from the sixteenth century ; according
to Jocher (iv. 191 3) it only exists in MS., and I do not know where
Gedike got his reference. — Thomas: Summa, P. ii. 2, Q. 172, arts.
5 and 6.

P. 141. Demonology as explanation of the oracles : see van
Dale, De oraculis, p. 430 (Amsterd. 1700) ; he quotes numerous
treatises from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I have
glanced at Moebius, De oraculorum ethnicorum origine, etc. (Leipzig,
1656). — CaeUus Rhodiginus : Lectionum antiq. (Leyden, 1516),
lib. ii. cap. 12 ; comp. Gruppe, § 15. — Caelius Calcagninus :
Oraculorum liber (in his Opera, Basle, 1544, p. 640). The little
dialogue is not very easy to understand ; it is evidently a satire on
contemporary credulity ; but that Caelius completely rejected
divination seems to be assumed also by G. I. Voss, Theol. Gent.
i. 6. — Machiavelli : Discorsi, i. 56. — Van Dale : De oraculis gentilium
(ist ed. Amsterd. 1683) ; De idololatria (Amsterd. 1696). DiflS-
culties with the biblical accounts of demons : De idol., dedication. —
Fontenelle : Histoire des oracles (Paris, 1687). The little book

164 NOTES

has an amusing preface, in which Fontenelle with naive complacency
(and with a sharp eye for van Dale's deficiencies of style) gives
an account of his popularisation of the learned work. On Fonte-
nelle and the answer by the Jesuit, Balthus, see for further details
Banier, La mythologie et les fables expliqiiées par I'Mstoire (Paris,
1738), bk. iii. ch. i. Van Dale's book itself had called forth an
answer by Moebius (included in the edition of 1690 of his work,
de orac. ethn. orig.). — On the influence exercised by van Dale and
Fontenelle on the succeeding mythologists, see Gruppe, § 34. —
Banier : see Gruppe, § 35.

P. 143. Vico : Scienza nuova (Milan, 1853), P- 168 (bk. ii. in
the section, Delia metafisica poetica) ; political allegories, e.g. p. 309
(in the Canone mitologico). Comp. Gruppe, § 44. — Banier : in
the work indicated above, bk. i. ch. 5.

P. 144. On the mythological theories of the eighteenth century,
comp. Gruppe, § 36 foil. ; on Bryant, § 40 ; on Dupuis, § 41. —
Polemic against Euheraerism from the standpoint of nature-
symbolism : de la Barre, Mémoires pour servir å I'histoire de la
religion en Grece, in Mém. de I'Acad. des Inscr. xxiv. (1749; the
treatise had already been communicated in 1737 and 1738); a
posthumous continuation in Mém. xxix. (1770) gives an idea of
de la Barre 's own point of view, which was not a little in advance
of his time. Comp. Gruppe, § 2i7-

P. 145. A good survey of modern investigations in the field of
the history of ancient religion is given by Sam Wide in the Einleit.
in die Altertumswissensch. ii. ; here also remarks on the mythology
of older times. The later part of Gruppe's work contains a very full
treatment of the subject.

INDEX

Absolute definitions of the divine,
i6, 19. 68, 69, 82, 88.

Academics, 149.

Academy, later, 108, 114.

Acosta, 137, 139, 141.

Aelian, 121.

Aeneid (mediaeval), 136.

Aeschines, 93.

Aeschylus, 54, 55.

Aetolians, 97, 98.

Alchemistic explanation of Pagan-
ism, 140.

Alcibiades, 60.

Alexander the Great, 93, 112.

Allegorical interpretation, 104, 113,
139, 140, 143, 144.

American Paganism, 137, 139, 141.

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, 7, 13,
25-29, 30, 31, 40, 62, 63, 66, 124.

Anaximenes, 30.

Angelology, 129.

Anthropomorphism, 14, 18, 19, 69.

Antisthenes, 13, 74, 109.

Apologists, 128, 130, 132, 139.

Arcissewsky, 138.

Aristides the Apologist, 129.

Aristides Rhetor, 121.

Aristodemus, 60, 62.

Aristophanes, 30, 32, 33, 39, 55,
56-58, 65. — Birds, 32. — Cloiids,
30. 55. 5^5^— Progs, 55.

Aristotle, 13, 30, 32, 46, 83-87, 104,
113. — Ethics, 84. — Metaphysics,
85-86.— Politics, 84.

Aristoxenus, 32, 33.

Asclepius, III, 121, 126.

Asebeia, 6, 7, 8.

Aspasia, 27.

Atheism (and Atheist) defined, i ;
rare in antiquity, 2, 133 ; of
recent origin, 2, 143 ; origin of
the words, 5 ; lists of atheists,
13 ; punishable by death in
Plato's Laws, 77 ; sin of youth,
78.

Athene, 74.
12

Athens, its treatment of atheism,
6-8, 9, 12, 25, 39, 65 foil., 74, 75,
83, 86 ; its view of sophistic,

58-59-
Atheos (atheoi), 2, 10, 13, 14, 19, 23,

29, 43, 75, 110.
Atheotes, 2.

Augustine, St., 129, 135.
Augustus, 117; religious reaction

of, 100, 113, 117, 120.
Aurelius, Marcus, 11, 121.

Bacon, Francis (De Sap. Vet.)

140.
Banier, 142, 143.
Bible, 130, 142.
Bion, 13, 109.
Brazil, 138.
Bruno, Giordano, 151.
Bryant, 144.
Buttmann, 152.

Caelius Calcagninus, 141.

Caehus Rhodiginus, 141.

Callicles, 48 foil., 63.

Carlyle, 112.

Cameades, 8, 108.

Cassander of Macedonia, iii.

Charon, 135.

Christianity, 126, 128-32.

Christians, their atheism, 9 ; pro-
secutions of, 10 ; demonology, 83.

Cicero, 19, 105, 1 14-17, 147. —
Nature of the Gods, 115. — On the
State, 115. — On the Laws, 115. —
De consolatione , 116.

Cinesias, 60.

Copernicus, 151.

Critias, 13, 44-50. — Sisyphus, 44 f.,
114.

Criticism of popular religion, 16,
17. 19. 35 foU-. 74. 78. 82, 84, 88,
90, 99, 104, 109, no, 122, 124-26.

Cuthites, 144.

Cynics, 74, 109-10, 122, 124, 147.
Cyrenaics, 75.

166

INDEX

Daimonion of Socrates, 65, 66,

72-73-
van Dale, ii\x-\z.
Dante, 135.
Deisidaimon, 75.
Demeter, 42, 43, Si.
Demetrius of Phalerum, 75, 93. —

On Tyche, 93.
Democritus, 24, 42, 43, 44, 47, 52.
Demonology, 81-83, 105, 113, 127-

32, 134-42, 148, 149-
Demosthenes, 92-93, 96.
Devil, 132, 137, 139, 141, 144.
Diagoras of Melos, 13, 31-34, 39,

50. — -Apopyrgizontes logoi, 32, 33.
Dicaearchus, 98.
Diodorus Siculus, 112.
Diogenes of Apollonia, 13, 29-30, 57.
Diogenes the Cynic, 109.
Dionj^sus, 42, 43.
Diopeithes, 28.
Dioscuri, 124.
Dium, 98.
Divination, iS, 20, 26, 27, 28, 40,

97, 114, 131, 135, 137, 140-42.—

Comp. Oracle.
Dodona, 98, 141.
Dogmatics, loS.
Domitian, 11.
Dupuis, 144.

Elements, divine, 23, 24, 30, 52 foil.,

57, 81, 103, 127."
Eleusinian Mysteries, 32, 33, 40, 60.
pnnius, 99, 112.
Epicureans, Epicurus, 13, 76, 80,

83. 105-7, ii3> 147. 149-
Euhemerus, Euhemerism, 13, iio-

12, 113, 114, 117, 127, 130, 136,

137. 139, 140. 142, 143. 144-
Euripides, 16, 17, 21, 45, 46, 48,
51-56, 62. — Bellerophon, 53. —
Melanippe, 55, 56.

Fallen angels, 128, 129, 130.
Florentine Academy, 138.
Foreign gods, 70, 89, 103.
Fontenelle, 142.

Geocentric view, 150.
Ger yon, 135.
Giants, 18.
Gorgias, 37.

Hades, 81.

Heavenly bodies, 2, 20, 22, 25, 43,
62, 66, 79, 80, 81, 84, 87, 104,

127, 128, 130, 137, 139, 144, 149,

151-
Heavenly phenomena, 22.
Hebraism, 139, 143, 144.
Hecataeus of Abdera, 112.
Heliocentric view, 151.
Hellenistic philosophy, 94, 103-10.

119.
Hephaestus, 42, 43.
Heracles, 74, iii.
Hercules, 136.
Herder, 145.
Hermae, 40, 60.
Hermes, 124.
Hermias, 83.
Herodotus, 28, 29.
Hesiod, 16, 18.
Heyne, 152.

Hippo of Rhegium, 13, 29-30.
Holy War, 96.
Homer, 16, 18, 43, 68, 106.
Horace, 117.
Huet, 139.
Hylozoism, 23.

Ideas, Platonic, 80.

Idolatry attacked, 123. — See also

Image Worship.
Ignorance, Socratic, 68.
Image Worship, 127, 128, 131-37.

Jews, their atheism, 9, 126.

Josephus, 128.

Judaism, 126, 127-28, 129.

Juno Regina, 136.

Jupiter (in Dante), 135 ; (in the

Thebais,) 136.
Jupiter-priest, 100.

Kepler, 151.
Kronos, iii.

Lampon, 26.
Lobeck, 152.
Lucian, no, 123-26. — Timon, 124.

■ — Dialogues of the Gods, 125.
Lucretius, 106.
Luna Jovis filia, 136.

Macedonia, 93.
Machiavelli, 141.
Magic, 136-37.
Mannhardt, 152.
Man tinea, constitution of, 32.
Marcus AureUus, 11, 121.
Mediaeval epic poets, 136.
Megarians, 74, 107.

INDEX

167

Menippus of Gadara, i lo.

Mexico, 137.

Middle Ages, 133, 135-39-

-Milton (Paradise Lost), 134, 135.

141.
Minos, 135.

Miracles, pagan, 131, 132.
Modesty, religious, 55, 70, 73.
Moschion, 46.
Moses and his sister, 139.
Monotheism, 9, 12, 23, 74. So, 83,

127 foil., 139, 148, 151.
Miiller, K. O', 152.

Natalis Comes, 139 foil.
Naturalism, Ionian, 21, 22-25,

30-31, 52, 57.
Negroes, 18.
Neo-Platonists, 83, 121.
Neo- Pythagoreans, 83, 121.
Nero, II.
Newton, 151.
Nile, 42.
Nomas (and PAysts), 35, 36, 38, 63,

74-
Nymphs, 136.

Oenomaus {The Swindlers Un-
marked), 122-23, 126.

Old Testament, 127, 129.

Oracle of Ammon, 07 ; oracles of
Boeotia, 97 ; Delphic Oracle,
28, 60, 67, 68, 71, 72, 77, 93, 96,
97, 123, 141 ; decay of oracles,
96-97 ; oracles explained by
priestly fraud, 123, 141-42.

Ovid, 117.

Paganism of Antiquity, its char-
acter, 15.

Panchaia, iii.

Parmenides, 21.

Pantheism, 20, 23, 103, 119, 122,
127.

Paul, St., 128.

Pericles, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 124.

Peripatetics, 147, 149.

Peru, 137.

Pheidias, 27.

Philip Tii. of Macedonia, 96.

Phihp V. of Macedonia, 97-9^

Philo, 128.

Phocians, 96.

Physis (and Novnos), 35. 36, 63, 74.

Pindar, i(>, 17, 52, 71.

Plato, 13, 39. 48, 49. 5". 5^< 59.
61-G3, 65, 66, 72, 76-81, 82, 84,

113, 147. — Apology, 59, 65, 66,
68, 72, 78, 79- — Euthyphron, 67,
76. — Gorgias, 48 foil., 63, 77. —
Laws, 61 foil., 77, 78, 79, 80. — •
Republic, 50, 56, 77, 78. — Sym-
posium, 82. — Timaeus, 77, 79, 80.

Platonism, 148.

Plethon, 138.

Pliny the Elder, 94, 95, 118, 147.

Plutaixh {de def. orac.), 97.

Polybius, 48, 90-91, 94, 99, 113-14.
147 ; Stoicism in P., 114.

Pomponazzi [De Lncantat.), 141.

Poseidon, 42, 81.

Poseidonius, 104.

Prodicus of Ceos, 13, 42-44, 104.

Protagoras of Abdera, 13, 39-4-.
47. — On the Gods, 39 foil. —
Original State, 47.

Providence, 60, 61, 78, 105, 118,
122.

Pythia, 93.

Reaction. reUgious, of second cen-
tury, 120-21, 125 ; of Augustus,
see Augustus.

Reinterpretation of the conceptions
of the gods, 2. — See also Alle-
gorical interpretation.

Religion a political invention, 47,
114.

Religious thought, early, of Greece,
16-17, 52. 54. 55. 69-70. 71. 84.
88, 98, 107.

Renaissance, 133, 138, 139 foil.,
141.

Rohde, 152.

Roman Academy, 138.

Roman religion, 90, 99-100, 101-2.

Roman State-worship, decay of,
98-103.

Romance of Troy, 136.

Romances, 95-96.

Rome's treatment of atheism, 8-11.

Rousseau, 145.

Scepticism, 107-8, 114, 147.

Schoolmen, 135.

Seneca, no, 122.

Sibylline books, 97.
I Sisyphus, 45, 48.

Socrates, 7, 13, 40, 46, 49, 56, 58
0^-7^, 84, 107, 147. See also
I Daimonion of S.

Socratic philosophy, 64, 87, 149.

Socratic Schools, 73, 87-88.
! Sol invictus, 136.

168

INDEX

Solon, 1 6.

Sophistic, 35-38, 57, 64, 87, 104,

148, 149.
Sophocles, 28, 54.
Stilpo, 13, 74, 108.
Stoics, 83, 103-5, 113, 118, 119,

121-22, 147, 148, 149.
Strabo, 97.
Strato, 87, 108.
Suetonius, 121.
Supernaturalism, 149—51.
Superstition, 75, 90, 102, 123, 126.

Tapuis, 138.

Thales, 24.

Theba'is (mediaeval), 136.

Theodicy (Sociatic), 67.

Theodoras, 13, 75-76, 108, 109. —

On the Gods, 75.
Theophrastus, 13, 86.
Thermon, 98.
Thomas Aquinas, 131, 135, 138,

139, 140.
Thracians, 18.
Thrasymachus, 50, 62.
Thucydides (the historian), 28-29,

92, 94-
Thucydides (the statesman), 26.
Tiberius, 118.
Tisiphone, 136.
Titans, 18.

Tolerance in antiquity, 9, 11.
Trajan, 11.
Tullia, 116.
Tyche, 91-96, 118.
Typhoeus, 140.

Uranos, iii.
U saner, 152.

Valerius Maximus, 118.

Varro, 100, no.

Vico {Scienza Nuova), 143.

Violation of sanctuaries, 40, 60, 97,

100.
Virgil, 117.
Voss, G. I., 135, 138, 141.

Wisdom of Solomon, 128.
Worship rejected, 9-13, 60, 74, 77,
84, 109, 123, 125.

Xenocrates, 81-82, 105, 113, 129.
Xenophanes of Colophon, 13, 17-

21, 52, 56.
Xenophon, 58, 59, 62, 66, 67. —

Memorab. 58, 60. — Apology, 58.

Zeller, 76, 79.
Zeno of Elea, 21.

Zeus, 16, 22, 30, 43, 55, 57, 58, 81,
105, III, 124.

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that it is Japan's aim, pursued with masterly perseverance and
foresight, to be fully equipped, in respect of naval bases, armed
forces, and economic safeguards, for the attainment of this national
aim, enforcing, if need be, her will upon other nations. As a
result of a close personal investigation of the present-day condition
of Japan and of strictly scientific treatment of his subject, General
Golovin has contributed a book which will undoubtedly be of
great interest to all students of politics and of military science, as
well as to the general public.

ESKIMO FOLK-TALES

By KNUD RASMUSSEN and W. WORSTER

Crown é^to Jlhistrated 15S. net

These stories were collected in various parts of Green-
land, taken down from the lips of the Eskimo story-tellers
themselves, by Knud Rasmussen, the Danish explorer, who
is a leading authority on Greenland and its people. The
stories bring before us the daily life of the Eskimos, their
manners and customs, and the curious " spirit world " which
forms their primitive religion.

This collection, the first of its kind, is edited especially
with a view to interesting the widest class of readers. The
work is in many ways unique, offering as it does material
from an almost untouched source, in a form calculated to
appeal to every type of reader. There is all the fascina-
tion of the fairy tale and the story of adventure, the charm
of a little-known country, as shown in the words of the
natives themselves. Lovers of folk-lore and students of
literature will find most interesting parallels and contrasts
to the legends of other lands.

The illustrations, by native Eskimo artists, are of an
altogether distinctive type, and admirably suited to the

text.

DELPHI

By Dr. FREDERIK POULSEN

Translated by C. C. RICHARDS
W itli a Preface by Proi\ PERCY GARDNER

Crmv7i ^fo Cloth 2IS. net

This important archæological work by the Keeper of
the Classical Department of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
Copenhagen, is based on a lengthy stay at Delphi in 1907,
and is copiously illustrated by photographs.

"A scholarly and attracti\e account . . highly interesting . . .
illustrated with good photographs." — Spectator.

"An admirable guide . . . every one in England who has visited or
wished to visit Delphi will welcome Dr. Poulsen's book."

Westminster Gazette.

"This magnificent book . . . will be enormously prized by every
scholar and Hellenist among us." — Bookman,

" He writes with the enthusiasm of an archæologist, the discrimination
of a historian, the suggestiveness of an expert in mythology, religion,
and philosophy . . . the book is an invaluable addition to our know-
ledge of Greek mythology and archæology." — Southport Guardian.

STUDIES ON ARTHROPODA

I

By H. J. HANSEN

With Four Plates 8s. net

Contents : — The Pedipalpi, Ricinulei and Opiliones (exc. O. Lania-
tores), collected by Mr. Leonardo Fea in tropical West Africa and
adjacent Islands (with Four Plates)— On Stridulation in Crustacea
Decapoda — On the Postembryonic Occurrence of the Median " Dorsal
Organ " in Crustacea Malacostraca.

CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
L, IL, m.

By VILHELM RASMUSSEN

1. The Soul-life of a Child in its First Four Years.

3s. 6d. net

II. The Kindergarten Child: Its conception of life and

its mental powers. 5s. 6d. net

III. The Kindergarten Child: Thought, imagination, and

feeling ; will and morale. 4s. net

"Accurate and interesting . . . chapters of absorbing interest . . .
serious and illuminating . . . should be of very great value to teachers
and parents." — Bookman.

"The book is valuable because it is based on evidence and tests
. . . deals exhaustively with the child ... we cordially recommend
these volumes." — Court Journal.

"Their value cannot be overestimated . . . skilful, first-hand ob-
servation . . . should be read by every teacher and by every intelligent
parent . . . interesting to the fascination point."- — Athenæuin.

" These fascinating volumes will be read with pleasure and instruc-
tion . . . should do much to place the study of child psychology in
childhood on a scientific footing." — Medical Times.

" Rich in instruction and suggestion." — Scotsman.

"An important and valuable treatise appealing to parents and the
general reader . . ." — Soufhport Gttardian.

" A service to the child and the parent . . they should be of great
interest to the parent . . straightforward, simple, and readable."

Liverpool Courier.

The Second Danish
PAMIR EXPEDITION

By Dr. OVE PAULSEN

Vol. I. Studies in the Vegetation of the Transcaspian
Lowlands, 191 2. 5s. net

Vol. II. Studies in the Vegetation of Pamir, 1920.

7s. 6d. net
A report of the botanical results of the expedition, with
chapters on the climate, structure, and geology. Illustrated
from photographs.

14 DAY USE

RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED

LOAN DEPT.

This book is due on the last date stamped below, or

on the date to which renewed.

Renewed books-are subject to immediate recall.

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General Library

University of California

Berkeley

GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY

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